


Ama Boy

by JBankai89



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: AMA, Ama culture, Diving, F/M, M/M, Spear Fishing, diver yuuri, freediving, merman, merman au, merman viktor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2019-08-17 16:27:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 50,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16519991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JBankai89/pseuds/JBankai89
Summary: The ama are one with the sea. They are freedivers, who dive deep on one lungful of air in order to harvest the ocean's gifts. The ama are women, and are a tight-knit sisterhood.Except for Katsuki Yuuri.His mother brings him to the sea when she dives, and he feels that same connection that the ama do. Only his best friend, Yuuko, does not shun him because of his gender.As Yuuri gets older, his love of the sea only deepens, and with his Marine Biology degree, he feels as though he knows all there is to know about the ocean.That is, until he comes face-to-face with a merman.





	1. Broken Custom

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: All Japenese words are from Google or the Living Language Japanese Learner’s Dictionary. Please let me know of any mistakes so I can fix them. Information on the ama, freediving, and various oceanographic factoids come mostly from the book Deep by James Nestor (which is an incredible book, which I highly recommend), Lyall Watson’s Sea Guide to Whales of the World, and Voyage to the Whales by Hal Whitehead. 
> 
> Updates are bi-weekly, and the next update will be November 18th. Enjoy :) 
> 
>  
> 
> **Disclaimer: This story is not intended for use as a guide to freediving, nor should it be viewed as such. The author claims no responsibility for the actions of its readers, and reminds them that this is a work of fiction. Any attempts at freediving should never be enacted alone, and never without training by a professional.**

_I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each._

 

_I do not think they will sing to me._

 

_I have seen them riding seaward on the waves_

_Combing the white hair of the waves blown back_

_When the wind blows the water white and black._

 

_We have lingered in the chambers of the sea_

_By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown_

_Till human voices wakes us, and we drown._

_The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock – T.S. Eliot (1917)_

 

Chapter One – Broken Custom

Yuuri bit his lip, his little hand gripping tightly to his  _okaasan_ as she led him down to the beach and the steely ocean beyond. Yuuri could hear the protests already, a few of the other ama were protesting his presence, but his mother shielded him, and barked something back to the women, too quick and too coarse for little Yuuri to make out clearly.

All the other children his age were crowded around a driftwood fire in windbreakers and boots, protecting them from the chilly April morning.

Yuuri did not fail to note that he was the only boy. Yuuri’s big sister, Mari, was already in her wetsuit and looking bored, while the little girls who were too young to participate in the dives were either chattering excitedly with each other, sorting out the snacks and tea for the divers, or warming their hands on the fire.

It was a sisterhood, one that Yuuri could not be part of.

“You sit and warm up, Yuuri,” his mother said, her voice warm and sweet as she set down her glasses on the bench next to him, then began to change into her wetsuit—there was no use in modesty out here, when most of the world had not yet woken up. “Don’t let the girls get to you, all right?”

“Okay, Mama,” he said uncertainly, while his gaze shifted to the other kids his age, and frowned when they began to hiss and whisper in his direction.

She smiled again and patted his head, then finished pulling on the suit, tucked her hair under a cap, and grabbed her bag. Without looking back, Katsuki Hiroko ran towards the sea.

Yuuri watched her, and like so many times before, she seemed to become one with the water as she disappeared beneath it. He knew his mother was one of the best ama, and could stay under for more than ten minutes if she really tried, but it was still early, and Yuuri had only counted to three minutes before he saw his mother’s head pop out of the water, far out to sea, but not so far that he need become concerned. He’d seen his mother swim out  _much_ farther than that before.

 

“You shouldn’t be here,” one of the girls suddenly accused snidely, and Yuuri turned to look at her, his eyebrows raised.

“How come?”

“Because you’re a _boy_ ,” she sneered. “Ama are girls-only, my mom said so.”

A few of the other girls nodded in fervent agreement, but another one with wide, bright eyes and chestnut hair jumped up angrily.

“No _way!_ ” she cried, “the ocean is for _everybody_ , you can’t tell him not to be ama!”

“Yes I can!” the girl shouted back, “ama is for girls, and he is not a girl.”

“I bet he’ll be the first boy ama, then!” she cried, gesturing to Yuuri dramatically, while Yuri felt a burning urge to shuffle into his jacket like a turtle into its shell. “And he’ll be the _best_ ama!”

“He won’t be ama!” the girl screamed again, her voice getting more screechy with every retort, “he’ll just be a _ry_ _ō_ _shi._ Or a _daib_ _ā._ He will _never_ be ama.”

Yuuri quickly became tired of the arguing, and scooped up his mother’s belongings so that they wouldn’t get lost, stolen, or damaged, and shuffled away from the bickering girls and down to a small cove. He sighed heavily as he sat down at the edge, digging his feet into the rocks and sand.

Yuuri stared into the water, his bottom lip quivering and his eyes flooding with tears, though he did his very best not to cry.

The truth was, he  _wanted_ to be ama. Unfortunately, like the girls on the beach, he knew that he couldn’t—not really. If he even tried, he’d be viewed as an outsider.

As Yuuri gazed into the water, he saw a tiny flash of pink in the shallows. He blinked, still sniffling a little, and rubbed his eyes, but the pink was gone. He squinted, and gasped a little when he spotted the small baby clam, swaying softly in the tide.

On impulse, Yuuri jumped up and rushed into the shallow water, soaking his running shoes and socks in the process as he snatched up the clam and hugged it close.

“I caught you,” Yuuri said as he opened his palm to look at the little clam, and realized that with it he’d scooped up a handful of sand and weeds as well. Quickly, he reached down to rinse the sand away, and beamed at the little clam again as he shuffled out of the water, and sat back down. “I’m ama now. I’ll show them.”

Yuuri heard a noise behind him, and he turned to see the girl who had defended him peeking into his cove, her eyes wide with concern.

“Are you okay?” she chirped, “those girls were really mean, but I yelled at them a whole lot for you.”

“I guess,” Yuuri replied as he shrugged. “Normally I stay home with _otosan_ , but he had to work today. I want to learn to be ama, but I know I’m not allowed—I’m not stupid.”

“You don’t look stupid,” the girl offered as she sat next to him, and knocked his knee with hers gently. “You look smart. But those girls were _really_ mean. I’d be upset too if they said mean things like that to me.”

“My mom thinks I’m smart, and my dad wants me to take over the _onsen_ when I grow up. But I like the ocean too much, I don’t want to do that.”

“My daddy is a fisherman,” the girl said, “he has his own boat and everything. My mommy has always been ama. I’m Yuuko, by the way, but you can call me Yu-chan,” she added, smiling brightly, “what’s your name?”

“Yuuri,” Yuuri replied shyly. “I’m seven.”

“I’m nine,” she offered, still smiling brightly at him, then noticed the way one of his hands was clutched into a fist, and said, “oh, what have you got?”

“A baby clam,” Yuuri said shyly, and opened his hand to show her. “I caught it all by myself.”

“Oh, that’s _amazing!_ ” she gushed, and clapped her hands together enthusiastically. “ _See_? You _can_ be ama!”

“I want to,” Yuuri replied in the same small tone of voice, “I don’t fit in with most boys at school, and girls won’t play with me ‘cause I’m a boy. I don’t fit in anywhere.”

“You fit in here,” Yuuko insisted, “the ocean is _life_. My mommy told me all about it. The ocean is where _all life_ in the whole entire world started, and it goes so deep that no light can get to the bottom, and there’s all sorts of animals in the ocean that we don’t even have a name for yet; it’s probably _millions_ of metres deep. If you don’t fit in anywhere, you _definitely_ fit in here, because you are from here...or...or something like that.”

Silence fell following Yuuko’s proclamation, while Yuuri tried to decide how it all made him feel.

He came  _from_ the ocean? He’d never heard that before. His mother knew a lot of things about the ocean, and taught him lots of things other kids thought he was making up, like the names of all the different depths—Epipelagic, Mesopelagic, Bathypelagic, Abyssopelagic, and Hadalpelagic—and some of the weirder things that lived so deep down, like Xenophyophores. His mother was smart, and he knew she’d gone to University about something with the ocean, but he couldn’t recall exactly what. But she had never told him that he was  _from_ the ocean.

“Is that true?” Yuuri asked curiously, “like a mermaid?”

“I dunno,” she replied honestly, “but swimming down real deep like our mommies do...it _feels_ like we’re part of it, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Yuri agreed as he gazed out across the ocean. At the same moment, Yuuri gasped as he saw a dolphin surface not far from them, its distinctive breath spray telling Yuuri exactly what kind it was—a common dolphin. Next to him, Yuuko let out a little squeak of delight at the sight of the creature.

“See, Yuuri?” she asked excitedly. “That _has_ to mean something. If your mommy won’t teach you to be ama, I promise that _I will._ ”

“You know, I bet there are probably more baby clams out there,” Yuuri said, still cradling his against his chest. “Want to help me find them?”

“Okay!”

 

~*~

 

Yuuri thought back to that day many times, and the warmth that it still brought him. He recalled his mother wandering into their cove a little while later, her wetsuit half-on, and half-off, having only noticed that he was missing after she started to undress, and he and Yuuko excitedly showed her their shirts full of sand and baby clams, and she praised the two children for their hard work.

That night, they’d had clam miso soup with their dinner, made with the clams he’d collected, but his mother and sister had sold their own catches at markets and to a few nearby sushi restaurants.

Now twenty-three and fresh from graduating University with a Marine Biology degree and specialization in Hadal Research, he understood better than ever why those girls had been so vehement about the fact that he could not be ama. It was a sisterhood in a man’s world, and even he was not allowed to penetrate that, no matter how much he wanted to be part of it.

And so he trained with his mother, sister, and Yuuko to freedive, starting at fifteen, but he adopted the story that he was a spear fisher, not ama.

But in his heart, Yuuri felt that he would always be ama.

After puberty, Yuuri no longer tried to dive with the other ama, all of whom were older women. Most of the girls that had accompanied their mothers and grandmothers on their dives when they were children had decided it had not been for them, and only his sister, a woman named Minako, and Yuuko still did it.

Yuuri trained away from the ama with Yuuko or his mother. His sister did not like him practising it, and though she supported his decision to dive, she did so grudgingly.

On that particular day, the first day of July, it had dawned bright and warm, and Yuuri was already at the beach when the sun began to glow on the horizon. He was in his black wetsuit, his arms were stretched over his head, and he was breathing deeply in preparation for the dive. His fishing spear had been tossed aside, only brought for show in case anyone asked, and Yuuko was already in the water, standing in waves up to her thighs while she waved at Yuuri to hurry up.

Yuuri smiled, and followed her into the water. Though he would like to dive alone, he still remembered The  _Rules—never_ dive alone.

With his net thrown over his shoulder, Yuuri raced after Yuuko into the deeper waters. He treaded water for a moment, breathing deep as he pulled on his mask, then filled his lungs, upended himself, and dove.

Yuuri watched the world darken as he dove, popping his ears regularly as he passed ten feet, twenty feet, thirty, touching down at seventy-five feet on the ocean floor. He could see Yuuko in his peripheral vision netting an urchin, while Yuuri turned his attention to the sea floor in front of him, ignoring a blacktip shark which had come in close to investigate what he was doing, though it darted back to its shiver the moment Yuuri began to kick up sand as he began to toss abalone into his net.

When Yuuri surfaced again, he found that he’d only been down for about four minutes. Something which Yuuko was quick to point out.

“Oh, Yuuri, you must be getting old!” she teased, grinning as they began to swim for shore. “Only _four minutes_.”

“You’re older than me!” he reminded her with a small grin, which only made her laugh.

“Come on, let’s get this stuff into the coolers, and we’ll see how long you can stay down, _ojisan_.”

 

They dove all morning, and along with the abalone he'd found, Yuuri managed to find a decent amount of oysters, some crabs, one urchin, and he grudgingly used his spear to nab an enormous octopus that would sell for a good price to the sushi restaurant. Unfortunately, the ink and blood expelled by the creature brought in a number of curious predators, and Yuuri decided to call it a day after that. 

Yuuri packed up his catches, while Yuuko protested, wanting to dive once more, but they moved to a different area of the beach just in case, mindful of the sharks Yuuri had accidentally attracted, and though Yuuri felt a little guilty about it, Yuuko brushed him off with another one of her sweet smiles.

“It’s fine, Yuuri, it happens,” she replied with a small shrug. “The point of doing this at all is to _let go_ and be part of nature, not control it.”

“You’re right, Yu-chan,” Yuuri replied, not looking at her as they walked, “I still feel bad though. Hopefully they’ll have moved on by tomorrow.”

“Come on,” she said, tapping his arm. “One last dive. I’ll forage and you just make sure I don’t drown. Deal?”

“Deal,” Yuuri replied with a small chuckle, and together they headed into the water again.

They dove deep, pushing just past one hundred feet before they touched down. Yuuko immediately began to chase after a crab that was dancing lazily across the sandy bottom, while Yuuri turned to the wreck of an old ship, and began to look around it, while being careful to keep his eye on Yuuko at all times.

As Yuuri explored the wreck, what seemed to be a World War II ship, he spotted a flash of silver from deep inside the cracked hull.

Yuuri blinked, glancing over to Yuuko again, who was adding an urchin to her net, then back to the hull. Inside it was dark, but again he saw that flash of silver, and a small cloud of sand floated up from its interior—far too much to be the result of a small fish.

Yuuri made a split-second, possibly stupid decision, and slipped into the hull to investigate.

Almost at once, he came face to face with something he didn’t expect.

It wasn’t a fish, or a shark.

It wasn't any other kind of sea creature he'd seen before either.

It was a merman.


	2. Loose Lips Sink Ships

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hi guys, thank you so much for your feedback on this first chapter :) As my first posted Viktuuri-centric story, it was really nice to see. Also special thanks to Eclair on Tumblr, who made a _beautiful_ calligraphy piece of one of the quotes from the first chapter, which you can check out [here](https://eclair.tumblr.com/post/179781388666/a-relatively-long-quote-based-on-the-yuri-on-ice).
> 
> Next update will be December 2nd.

Chapter Two – Loose Lips Sink Ships

 

Had Yuuri been a less experienced diver, he may have released his air in shock at what he was seeing.

Instead, he stared, eyes wide, at the creature before him.

Yuuri could not see all of him, but it was still enough to know that what he was seeing was not a hoax. The merman had short, silver hair that matched his tail; deep slits were carved into his base of his throat, and they opened and closed on a regular basis—gills. Bright silver scales danced from his waist, trailing downwards and growing in volume until they connected with his tail, his pectoral fins closed and flat against his body as he hid, but displayed sharp barbs that could tear Yuuri to ribbons if he got too close to the creature.

All of this was amazing and mind-bending, but nothing moreso than the creature’s eyes—wide, large eyes, of a deep blue that matched the dark sea. Old eyes.

Though the merman could not be more than twenty-seven or so by human standards, something in his eyes gave Yuuri the impression that he was older than that— _much_ older. 

 

The merman smiled coyly at Yuuri, the expression almost friendly, and he pressed a white finger to his lips before he disappeared deeper into the wreck, where Yuuri could not safely follow him.

Yuuri wanted to. He wanted to throw caution into the wind and dive into that wreck after this mythical being that couldn’t  _possibly_ be real.

However, the logical parts of his brain balked at the suicidal aspect of this train of thought. If he dove deeper, he risked drowning.

Reluctantly, he pushed off of the sea floor, and headed for the surface.

At the fifteen-foot mark, Yuuri saw Yuuko pass him on her way back down. Her eyes were tense with concentration, but she immediately stuttered to a stop when she spotted Yuuri. She somersaulted in the water, bubbles flying from her mouth, and she glared at him, pointed to the surface, and shot back up.

Yuuri followed, bracing himself for an argument as he went.

“Yuuri!” she cried the moment that they surfaced. “I was worried! You were down for almost ten minutes, and when I got up, I couldn’t find you! What _happened?_ ”

Yuuri huffed a little in annoyance at her motherly tone, and waved at her, motioning for her to follow him back to shore. She puffed out her cheeks at him, but followed, her net slung over her shoulder like Santa’s gift bag, except filled with shellfish instead of presents.

They made it to shore and tramped over to their pile of belongings without a word to one another. One of the crabs had gotten out of Yuuri’s cooler somehow, and he tossed it back in without a thought, while his fingers continued to tingle a little from the extended dive—an expected side effect, but an uncomfortable one nonetheless.

“So are you ever going to tell me what happened?” Yuuko asked grumpily as Yuuri sat down on the cooler and picked up his thermos of green tea. He poured out a cup for each of them, and stared into the clear, fragrant tea for a long moment before he finally spoke.

“I think...I think I may have seen something in an old wreck while I was waiting for you to finish your dive,” Yuuri explained nervously, feeling almost as though he was betraying the creature for speaking at all. “Something that shouldn’t be there.”

“What, like a mermaid?” she joked, but her smile fell the moment she spotted the stricken look on Yuuri’s face. “Yuuri, a _mermaid_ , _seriously?_ It was probably nothing, you have to know that. We were down a hundred feet, and you were down for a _long_ time. You know as well as I do that staying past your limits that deep can sometimes make you see things that aren’t there. It was probably just lack of air that was messing you up—people always hallucinate right before they black out, so it’s a good thing that you surfaced when you did.”

“Maybe...” Yuuri mused, sipping his tea as he gazed out over the water, calm and clear today, and just offshore he spotted another reef shark, this one rooting around a hollow under some coral. “It felt so real, though.”

“So did the time I thought I saw a giant hamburger diving with me,” Yuuko replied, her tone almost teasing, but her smile was warm, and not judgmental. “And then I woke up with your mom blowing on my eyelids and yelling, ‘ _breathe!_ ’ at me. It _always_ feels real, Yuuri.”

“I guess,” Yuuri admitted reluctantly, and curved the impulse to say more. Despite Yuuko's insistence, and how positively ridiculous he sounded, even in his own head, Yuuri was still _certain_ that the merman had been real.

 

~*~

 

Yuuri and Yuuko packed up their car and drove to the market and restaurants to sell the day’s catches. Yuuri got a decent amount for his octopus, as well as a few slaps on the back for the abalone, and he smirked to himself when he spotted the chef of one place not even bothering to sell one of the scallops Yuuri had brought in, but instead sliced it open, squeezed some yuzu onto it, and ate it straight from the shell.

Yuuri headed home in a good mood after dropping Yuuko off, the thick wad of cash in his pocket buoying his spirits, and helping him to—mostly—forget why he'd been so glum earlier.

“I’m home,” Yuuri called when he stepped inside, and his father smiled brightly from his spot behind the counter when he spotted him.

“Yuuri!” he cried, “welcome home. Are you hungry? Your mother’s making _katsudon_ , and I can tell her to make you one too.”

“Sure,” Yuuri replied as he toed off his shoes, while his father shouted something to his mother, who was hidden away in the kitchen. Yuuri stepped through an adjacent door, and over to one of the free tables in the private dining room that their family used. At almost the same moment, his mother bustled out of the kitchen with twin bowls of katsudon in her hands, piled high with extra strips of breaded pork, which made Yuuri’s mouth water.

“Yuuri,” his mother said warmly as she set down one of the bowls for him. “Welcome home. Did you have a good dive today?”

“It was good,” he replied, smiling a little. “I caught an octopus. A _big_ one. Tanaka-san at _KuniSushi_ was really happy.”

“Oh, well done!” Hiroko replied with a warm smile. “Yes, Tanaka-san _would_ be happy about that. And how did Yuuko do?”

“She got mostly crabs and abalone, and some oysters,” Yuuri replied in between bites of pork, rice, and egg. “But she got mad at me for staying down a little too long.”

Yuuri paused, and bit his lip. His hesitation was mirrored only by his certainty that what he had seen was _not_ in his imagination, and quickly he blurted out, “Okaasan, I think I saw something, but...but Yu-chan thinks it was just a pre-blackout hallucination.”

His mother raised her eyebrows, silently inviting Yuuri to continue, and he swallowed nervously. If anyone would believe him, it was Katsuki Hiroko.

His mother spent more time in the ocean than Yuuri did; she was the woman who had nurtured Yuuri's love of diving, and showed him the path to connecting with it. She could dive to two hundred feet on a single breath, and had swum with sharks and sperm whales, nearly drowned thanks to an attack from a Humboldt squid, but still surfaced laughing, while they rushed her to the hospital.

She had encouraged Yuuri's love of the ocean all his life.

If  _anyone_ would believe him, it would be his mother.

“I think I saw...” Yuuri trailed off, and bit his lip nervously, but his mother’s warm and open expression did not change. “I was diving with Yu-chan, the last dive of the day. I was done, but she wanted to do one last dive. I was exploring this old wreck, not going in, just in case, and then I saw...something.”

“What did you see, Yuuri-kun?”

“A—a _merman_. Like from the old Greek tales.”

“Oh, you did?” Hiroko asked, though to Yuuri’s shock, she did not sound in the least bit surprised by her son’s admission. “That’s very lucky, Yuuri-chan. They don’t come out and see people very much.”

“But...” Yuuri trailed off, the piece of egg dropping from his chopsticks as he stared at his mother. “Aren’t they...not real?”

“You saw one,” his mother pointed out with a cheerful smile, and Yuuri flushed with embarrassment.

“I know, but...how do I know it wasn’t me seeing things, like Yuuko said?”

“Did it _feel_ like a hallucination?”

“No, but what hallucination does?”

“True, true...” Hiroko paused, and pressed her chopsticks to her bottom lip thoughtfully. “When you saw this merman, what did he do? When I saw a shiver of them off the coast of Crete in 1979, most of them scattered, but one pretty one stayed, and played me a sweet melody using nothing more than an empty cone shell.”

“A shiver?” Yuuri asked with a weak laugh, somewhat desperate to get his mother _off_ the topic of Crete. If she got going, she could talk about her 1979 trip to Crete for _hours_. “Not a school, or a pod?”

“No, these mermaids were certainly a shiver,” her mother replied thoughtfully. “Most of them had shark tails—Reef Sharks, like blacktips and such. Only one had what looked like a fish tail, and the rest all protected her. I suppose she must have been their queen, or something like that. But one, with the tail of a tiger shark, she had long dark hair and big almond eyes...she dove, playing her instrument, and I swear I could hear the melody better in the water than I ever could on the surface. I followed her to a blue hole, and she laughed at me, and then vanished into the depths where I could not follow. That’s always stayed with me, but most people—ama included—would never believe my story, so I stopped bringing it up. But obaasan believed me. She said it was good luck to be shown attention by a mermaid. And I should know that to be true—six months later, I met your father.”

“Wow,” Yuuri breathed, sitting back in his seat a little. “That’s...wow.”

“And what did your merman do?” his mother asked kindly, and Yuuri flushed. Comparatively, he felt that his own story did not exactly measure up to his mother’s.

“Not much,” he admitted. “He was hiding in the wreck I mentioned, and he was...” Yuuri flushed again. “He was beautiful. Silver all over, with blue eyes. A fish tail, and his scales looked like snow or ice flecks on his skin. He was hiding from me and Yu-chan, I think. But then I saw him, he put his finger to his lips, and dove deeper into the wreck. I wanted to follow him, but I needed to surface, and I didn’t go back.”

“Oh, dear...” his mother said, her expression falling a little, and Yuuri paled.

“What?” he asked nervously, “what is it?”

“Yuuri, don’t you think maybe this merman was telling you to _not_ tell anyone about his presence?” she asked nervously. “Merpeople can be fairly temperamental...he might curse our family if you don’t apologise to him, right away.”

“ _Now_?” Yuuri asked, “but...okaasan, this is just silly. I’m sorry, but how do we know this is really real, and not my mind playing tricks?”

“Better safe than sorry, Yuuri-kun,” she said firmly. “Finish eating, and we’ll head back to the beach in an hour. We have plenty of sunlight left, and I will watch for you while you dive and find this merman and apologize for your rudeness. Understand?”

“Yes, okaasan,” Yuuri replied with a small groan, which his mother responded to with a bright smile.

 

~*~

 

Yuuri hadn’t quite expected to be going out again to the beach, and his wetsuit had been left at home to dry, but that hadn’t deterred his mother from producing a pair of swim trunks for him before she drove Yuuri to the beach he’d been diving at that morning.

He thought this was silly, and didn’t really  _want_ to go looking for something that was probably his mind playing tricks on him, but what choice did he have? His mother was  _making_ him do this.

The water was still clear, with a high visibility of nearly two hundred feet. His mother swam out with him, stopping at a point where the depth was only about seventy-five feet, while Yuuri swam out farther to the wreck where he’d seen the merman before. The plan was for her to practice diving while keeping an eye on him, which may have bothered some people who were more solitary, but Yuuri understood the dangers of diving alone, and didn’t fault his mother at all for watching him like a hawk.

Yuuri huffed a small sigh as he slowed to a stop above the wreck, took a few breaths to adequately prepare himself— _inhale, hold, exhale...inhale, hold, exhale—_ then took one last deep breath, and dove.

As Yuuri approached the wreck, to him, it looked empty. A few fish were darting in and out of it, and he spotted a few crabs burrowing into the rotted wood and rusty metal, but no sign of his so-called  _merman_ .

Suddenly, the water seemed to almost vibrate as echolocation clicks bounced off Yuuri’s skin. It was so loud that it had to be from something  _huge_ , but when he turned in the water, he saw nothing—no whales or dolphins that he could see.

Not that that meant much. Given how far sound could travel in water it could be very far off, but it sounded so close that Yuuri was certain he’d at least be able to see a silhouette of something. However, the water in his field of vision was devoid of anything larger than a moray eel hiding in the coral.

Yuuri turned back to the wreck, and nearly fell over in shock.

In an instant, he’d found the source of the clicks. The merman was back, and he was staring right at Yuuri.

 


	3. Fathoms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Surprise early update! Please enjoy :) And thank you guys so, so much for all your support of this story, it's amazing to see. The next update is scheduled for December 16th, and that will be the _last update_ before the holidays. The next one will be January 13th, when Chapter Five will be posted. I'm really sorry for the huge delay, but I don't have internet at home, and finding time during the holidays to post is a pain, so it's just easier on me to wait it out. Just to reiterate, this will not be the last update before the holidays, the next one is.

Chapter Three – Fathoms

 

The merman didn’t speak. Instead, he offered Yuuri a coy smile, and winked.

Yuuri stared, at a loss of what to do while the creature unfurled his tail a little more, ensuring that he stayed in place, and his large fins fluttered gently in the current while he gazed back at Yuuri.

The merman didn’t speak, which Yuuri found a little odd. Instead, he made clicked, like a whale might, and peppered Yuuri’s body with his echolocation vocalizations.

Despite this, Yuuri could see no way for the merman to adequately absorb the sound. Cetaceans like whales and dolphins had heads with special domes in order to absorb the sound of their clicks, but this merman’s head bore no oddness in shape, nor anywhere else on his body. From the waist up, at least, he looked almost like a regular human.

The merman flicked his tail, and he jetted forward suddenly. Startled, Yuuri kicked his legs to get back, uncertain what this creature’s intentions were. The merman smiled, and reached for Yuuri’s hand.

Though he knew nothing of this creature, Yuuri did not hesitate to grab hold of the proffered limb.

The merman’s skin did not feel like human skin. It was almost rubbery, like that of a dolphin. Yuuri stared at the merman, startled and confused by his actions. Then, without warning, the merman darted off—and dragged Yuuri along with him.

Yuuri could do nothing but streamline his body in order to keep from hurting himself, and tried to tug his hand from the merman’s hold, only to have the creature’s grip on him tighten. Fear gripped him, intensifying when Yuuri saw where they were headed—a dropoff.

Yuuri had been warned from the time he began to dive to  _never_ go off a dropoff, especially alone. Crevasses like this could go down hundreds, possibly thousands of feet, and more dangerous still was how a diver's dark wetsuit often gave them a similar silhouette to seals, and large sharks tended to attack from below.

Yuuri panicked, and began to tug more insistently against the merman’s hold on him. The extra energy he was expending was wasting oxygen and made his vision waver, while a narrow stream of bubbles escaped his lips as he continued to struggle.

The merman ignored him, tugged him over the edge, and they fell into the black.

Yuuri glanced to his dive watch, and he watched in horror as the numbers displayed there began to rise rapidly while they drifted down into the deep.

 

_150 Feet..._

_200 Feet..._

_250 Feet..._

 

At three hundred feet below sea level, Yuuri’s head was aching from the pressure, and his lungs were protesting fiercely. The merman veered away from the deep dark of the crevasse suddenly, and moved towards a crack in the stone, which to Yuuri looked more like a tear in the skin of the earth, rather than a cave entrance.

_This must be where he takes his prey to eat it..._ Yuuri thought hazily, uncertain why else he would be dragged off like this. He was no longer fighting, but drifting along as his vision continued to warp.

As they passed into the cave’s entrance, his world went black.

 

“— _the!_ ”

The voice was unfamiliar, and it floated into Yuuri’s mind seemingly out of nowhere.

“ _Breathe! Oh, please, come on, breathe!_ ”

That voice again.

Breathe? He needed to breathe?

An unfamiliar hand tapped his cheek. The skin felt odd, almost like rubber.

All at once, Yuuri’s eyes flew open, and he choked in air, coughing hard and spraying the damp stone before him with flecks of red.

Slowly, his vision cleared, and above him, he saw the silhouette of someone leaning over him, their blue eyes flooded with worry.

Yuuri coughed again, more blood flying from his mouth, and then he noticed that there was a warm wetness coming from his ears. He lifted a numb hand and pawed clumsily at it, and his fingers came away dotted with red. He cursed inwardly.

_I must’ve torn my larynx..._ he thought with a small grimace. He’d heard of it happening to competitive freedivers who went too deep too fast, but given that he had never gone this deep before, really, it wasn’t all that shocking—except now he couldn’t do what he needed to—he couldn’t talk to the merman.

He tried anyway, opening his mouth and attempted to speak, but it was too painful, like he'd swallowed a mouthful of glass shards. He couldn't even ask where he was, or why the merman seemed to know his language.

Grimacing with frustration, Yuuri tapped his throat to indicate that he couldn’t talk.

“No speaking?” the merman asked, cocking his head a little to the side like a curious puppy, and Yuuri nodded. “Why?”

Yuuri had no idea how to explain that. He glanced around the cavern, hoping he could find something to write with, but then realized something—he saw no cave mouth. His last memory was being dragged into an  _underwater_ cave.

Yuuri gasped in amazement, but immediately regretted it when he began to cough, more flecks of blood flying from his mouth as he did so. It was nowhere near enough blood to be concerning, but it still hurt. However, the gentle hand that rubbed his back helped, and he felt himself slowly recover enough for him to take in his dark surroundings.

Yuuri looked again, his eyes squinting, and he noticed how the stone looked almost eternally damp. No cave mouth, and instead the stone Yuuri was sitting on gave way to water, and what seemed to be a tunnel. There had been many conflicting theories about the existence of caves like this, ones that contained pressurized, breathable oxygen, but as far as Yuuri had been taught, they only existed in cartoons and novels, not real life.

And to find one so close to home...it was nothing short of amazing.

Yuuri had no idea how he’d get back to the surface, but decided to save that worry for later. If he focused on more than one thing at a time, he thought he might be sick from panic. Too many new things were happening all at once, and thinking on them all made his head ache.

When Yuuri at last glanced back towards the merman, he saw that the creature was still watching him, waiting for an answer as to why he couldn't speak. Sign language was always an option, but Yuuri's knowledge of it was mediocre, at best, knowing only the signs that he had Yuuko used when diving— _shark, up, down, jellyfish,_ and so on. Instead, he mimed the action of diving deeply with his hands, then pressed them together, leaving a space in between them, and thankfully the merman seemed to understand what he was getting at.

“The water hurt your voice?” he asked, and Yuuri smiled a little, nodding. _Close enough._

The merman seemed as though he wanted to ask  _why_ again. At the last moment, it appeared as though he recalled that Yuuri couldn’t speak, and instead smiled a little as he said, “I think I know why you came back. You need to apologize, because I told you not to tell anyone that you saw me, and you told people, yes?”

Yuuri’s mouth dropped open.  _How did he know?_

The merman chuckled, as though Yuuri’s shock was somehow amusing to him. He was still mostly in the water, but the clarity in this area of the ocean made it easy for Yuuri to see every flick and swish of his beautiful tail, ensuring that Yuuri did not forget that he was talking to a creature who was not human.

“I am called Viktor,” the merman said, and offered him another smile. “I am a _Lëd_ merman, from a school to the north. We come south for breeding, but many of my companions still find this water too warm, and too full of humans—they stay in the deep waters, where humans cannot reach them. I am one of five; our leaders went farther south where it is warmer, now that they deem us all as old enough to take care of ourselves.”

Yuuri wanted to ask more questions. So many had exploded into his mind, but he could voice none of them. However, Viktor somehow seemed to know what he wanted to ask, and began to speak again.

“I always find humans fascinating, so I watch, when it is safe,” he said, his tone almost wistful as he spoke. “We can live for many hundreds of years, but whalers in centuries past thought our tails were for them to take, and many of my kind were slaughtered. Some as trophies, and some for the oils in our skin. I have heard fishermen talk, and they say we burn better than sperm whales, but we are small, and so they would need to slaughter hundreds of us—thousands, to get enough oil.

“Most of my kind adapted for deep waters, where it was safe. We learned echolocation from the sperm whales, and we survived on diets of deep-sea creatures, ones that never see the day. Many of the warriors of my kind bear so many scars from other predators that they look pure white. But I have always been foolish, and I found humans interesting.

“I learned your language, and I listened to you. I stayed to the coastal waters of the Asiatic where people are less. You have a connection to the ocean still, one others of your kind no longer possess. I heard you, you called it... _Ama_.”

Yuuri nodded, smiling a little. There was so much he wanted to say in that moment, how he wanted to explain to Viktor the intricacies of what it meant to  _be_ ama, but his voice would be lost to him until he got to a doctor, and then it would be  _weeks_ before he could dive again. He knew that this was Viktor’s fault, technically, but he couldn’t find it in himself to be angry with him. It had been an accident, after all—three hundred feet to a merman was probably nothing.

“I should take you back up,” Viktor said suddenly, once again as though he'd heard Yuuri's thoughts. “You are bleeding, and you need a...a...what do you call it? Doc-door.”

Yuuri just barely managed to stifle a laugh, though it still hurt as he swallowed. Viktor smiled again, and nodded, pressing two fingers to Yuuri’s sternum, and they glowed a bright, electric blue. Yuuri tensed, pain lancing through his throat again. For a moment, he thought it was from his injury, but then he realised that the pain was external, not internal.

Yuuri lifted up a tentative hand, uncertain if he was imagining things, but he felt it—two flaps of skin on either side of his throat.

Somehow, impossibly, Viktor had given him  _gills_ .

“This will last only until we get to the surface,” Viktor explained, backing up a little to give Yuuri space to jump back into the water. “It is the extent of my ability, something we use to help shipwrecked sailors we deem worthy of saving. I am afraid I do not know enough of how humans work to fix your hurt.”

For half a moment, Yuuri almost wanted to ask about Greek Sirens, and how such a thing went against all that he’d heard about merfolk in stories, but then he recalled again that he could not speak, and, perhaps, it was a good thing he couldn’t. Likely, Viktor would not appreciate such a remark, and in particular after he had saved Yuuri’s life.

“Take my hand, I will keep you safe,” Viktor said, extending the limb to Yuuri. He accepted it without a moment’s hesitation, and Viktor led him out of the cave.

The deep dark blue looked the same from every angle, and as Yuuri inhaled painful breaths through his new gills, his torn larynx seared from the salt water passing over it. Initially, his lungs protested the water, but as it passed through his gills, his body relaxed, and only then did he notice something else—he felt none of the pressure pain that he should have felt at this depth.

Yuuri made a mental note to ask Viktor about that if he ever saw him again, and tightened his hold on the merman’s hand as he led Yuuri up and back towards the safety of the surface.

 

Yuuri’s head broke though the water, choking and gasping for air barely twenty feet from shore. Viktor was gone, disappearing almost immediately into a nearby kelp forest, while Hiroko rushed forward through the shallows and embraced Yuuri tightly.

“Oh, _Yuuri!_ ” she cried tearfully, hugging him so tightly that he swore that his ribs would crack. “I turned around for a second and you were _gone!_ I was about to call Emergency Services, what _happened_?”

Yuuri didn’t reply, and instead walked shakily up to the beach, leading his mother while he pawed at his throat to see if the gills were still there, but they were already gone. The only proof he still had of his experience was the searing pain in his throat, which reassured him that he  _probably_ hadn’t hallucinated the whole thing.

“Yuuri?” His mother prompted when Yuuri paused to pick up a stick on the shore. “What’s wrong, why won’t you talk to me?”

_Hospital, now,_ Yuuri wrote in the sand.  _Torn larynx, I think. Went too deep._

His mother nodded, assuming a more professional air about her as she gathered up their belongings, and immediately shepherded her son to the car.

 

~*~

 

Thankfully, Yuuri's larynx was not torn too badly. However, it was still enough to warrant surgery to mend it, and a very uncomfortable feeding tube inserted into his stomach, along with multiple rounds of antibiotics.

“Oh, Yuuri, don’t worry,” Yuuko said warmly when she came to visit him, the grapes she’d brought left untouched, given that Yuuri still wasn’t allowed solid food, which Yuuko had unfortunately forgotten. “You’ll be back in the water before you know it.”

“ _I hope so,”_ Yuuri wrote out on the tablet his mother had lent him, holding it at an angle where Yuuko could see the screen. “ _I’m tired of being stuck in bed._ ”

“Do you still have that crazy doctor?” she asked, half teasing, and Yuuri huffed a little.

“ _Don’t make me laugh_ , _still hurts_ ,” he typed as he recalled the doctor who tried to talk him into giving up freediving, and how his mother had torn him a new one over it. “ _He won’t come in if my okaasan is here anymore, and he hasn’t brought up diving again._ ”

“Good,” she replied with a little giggle. “I mean, telling _Katsuki Yuuri_ to not dive is like telling a dog not to bark.”

“ _Exactly,_ ” Yuuri replied, _“I don’t think he understood that it’s more than just a livelihood.”_

Yuuko hummed her agreement, and they fell into a comfortable silence. It was true, Yuuri was anxious to get back in the water, but not for the reasons his friend thought.

He wanted to see Viktor again.

While part of the reason that he said nothing was because he knew that Yuuko wouldn’t believe him, the other reason was that he wanted to keep most of the experience to himself. Even with his mother he had kept his responses to her questions about Viktor simple and a little vague. It almost felt like his mother was peering in on a private moment, one Yuuri did not wish to share.

Yuuri fidgeted, Yuuko giggled as she remarked on his eagerness to get out of bed. He smiled, and offered a halfhearted response on his tablet, but his thoughts were still stuck on Viktor.

Would he be angry that Yuuri had been away so long?

Would he be sorry that he hurt Yuuri?

Would he ever see Viktor again?

_I hope I see him again,_ Yuuri thought as he half-listened to Yuuko detail to him her catches for that day. She’d been going out with her husband, who was a tuna fisherman by trade, and not accustomed to diving for his catches. From what Yuuri had gathered, Takeshi wasn’t the best partner, but he kept Yuuko from drowning, at least.

“Yuuri-kun, it’s been a _nightmare_ ,” she said with a dramatic sigh, while she laid her hand upon her forehead, like a heartbroken actress on stage. “Takeshi can’t even get down to twenty feet for more than a minute, so mostly he snorkels on the surface and watches me, and he takes his trawler out in the evenings for squid, and my mom has been watching the girls. We _all_ can’t wait for you to get better.”

Yuuri smiled in amusement to Yuuko's words while his gaze shifted to the window. The wing of the hospital that he was situated in looked right out onto the bay, and the sea beyond. Yuuri felt his heart swell with longing as he gazed out at the clear blue sea and sky. If he wasn’t stuck in bed, it would have been a  _perfect_ day to dive.

The salty sea air tickled Yuuri’s cheeks from the open window, and as he gazed out, he could almost swear that he spotted a glimmer of silver scales a few hundred feet from shore.

Yuuri hoped it was Viktor. He smiled as he imagined the merman popping up out of the water to offer him a wave in greeting, and nearly laughed aloud at the gobsmacked look Yuuko would almost certainly adopt upon seeing him.

Unfortunately, the sea was calm, and no merman broke the surface.

 


	4. Open Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This will be the last pre-holiday update. The next one is scheduled for January 13th. All of you guys have a safe and happy holiday and I'll see you all in the new year! :)

Chapter Four – Open Heart

 

It had been a long, gruelling eight weeks of bed rest, medications, and rehabilitation for Yuuri.

When Yuuri was at last able to speak again, he found that his voice was raspier than before. Yuuko teased him about it endlessly, certain that it would  _definitely_ get him a boyfriend, to which Yuuri would always roll his eyes and brush her off—getting a boyfriend was hardly top of his list right now, when all he wanted to do was get back in the water.

But he couldn't. At least, not right away. First, there was his welcome home celebrations, complete with the gift of a new dog—a rescue that looked almost unnervingly like his old poodle, Vicchan.

He named it Makkachin, though Yuuri could not fathom why he named it that.

“I don't know,” he said with a feeble shrug whenever someone asked him about the name, “it just sounds right.”

 

Makkachin was a wonderful companion while he recuperated at home, and barred from going into deep water for another few weeks. It killed Yuuri to stay away from the deeper parts of the ocean, but Makkachin seemed to love the shallows, and bounded along the shore joyously, rushing in and out of the water to fetch things for Yuuri—bits of seaweed, driftwood, shiny rocks, empty shells—he was like a canine magpie.

Yuuri would praise him for these gifts, and as he twisted the arm of his doctors, began to run through the shallows with Makkachin, but sadly he was still forbidden from going too deep—he had just healed his larynx, after all, and he could risk rupturing it again if he began to dive too soon.

The worst part, at least for Yuuri, was the absence of both Yuuko, and, to a lesser extent—Viktor.

Yuuko had begun to dive with his mother, finally giving up on her husband as a diving partner, and they were both often diving while Yuuri wandered along the beach. In this, he was reluctant to convince Yuuko to skive off and walk with him instead—diving was her livelihood, and with three hungry mouths to feed, Yuuri couldn't in good conscience ask her to come along.

The absence of Viktor was different. He felt it more acutely, like the loss of a dear loved one. It was strange, given that he barely  _knew_ the man (the  _merman,_ he reminded himself) but he felt the most curious pull, almost a desperate need to find him again.

However, unlike in the mermaid stories of boats smashing themselves to pieces in a desperate attempt to reach the creatures, his will to survive was stronger. Yuuri felt no desperate pull to dive deep and try and find Viktor. He kept to the shallows, and watched the horizon with hope that he might catch sight of him.

Makkachin whined, drawing Yuuri out of his musings. He smiled a little, and his gaze fell to the dog.

“Oh, Makka, was I ignoring you?” Yuuri asked, and the dog let out a little bark, as though in confirmation. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. I've just got a lot of things on my mind.”

The dog barked again, and ran in circles around his legs, splashing Yuuri with water and sand as he went. Yuuri laughed, and waded a little deeper into the water, stopping when he was up to his knees, and watched as Makkachin continued to follow, paddling out with surprising ease, but in hindsight, perhaps this should not have been so shocking—according to his mother, Makkachin had been  _found_ on a beach before he was rescued.

Makkachin barked again, paddling out almost twenty feet from shore before he turned, and began to follow the coast towards an outcropping of rock.

Yuuri knew the spot, though he never had much call to go there. Yuuko always called it  _iwa-chu_ , or the Kissing Rock.

The name never made sense to Yuuri, because it wasn't just a rock, but a seaside cave, often crawling with crabs and other sea life. To Yuuri, it never seemed like a good kissing place, though he was never a very good judge of those sorts of things, given he'd only kissed one person in his life, back when he was in University.

_ One person who turned into one of my best friends,  _ Yuuri thought, smiling a little as he thought of Phichit. He hadn't seen his friend in a long while, who was a spear-fisher and Ocean Conservationist in Bangkok, and Yuuri had revelled in their field study days together. It had given him ample opportunities to show off how deep he could safely go, and referred Phichit to a few teachers in Tokyo who could train him on how to go deeper. The last time he'd seen Phichit, he could make it to eighty feet without any problems.

_ Maybe I should invite him over once the rainy season starts, when he can't safely dive as much... _ Yuuri mused as he walked with Makkachin, who was happily splashing through the shallows, and continued to occasionally bring him things, such as clam shells, sand dollars, and one cone shell, the latter which Yuuri had the good sense to quickly toss back into the water, just in case.

As they walked, Yuuri's head was still in the clouds, but shifted to alarm when Makkachin suddenly started to bark excitedly, and when Yuuri glanced up, he saw the dog pelting towards  _ iwa-chu _ , and seemed to be chasing something in the water.

_ Something silver _ .

Yuuri's breath caught, and his head spun with shock and excitement.

_Could it be?_

Yuuri broke into a run along the shoreline, following the dog as he chased the silver thing as it darted through deeper waters. There was every chance that it was a shark about to eat his poor, unwitting dog, or a dolphin that was just messing with them, but somehow, impossibly, Yuuri just  _knew_ that it was neither.

Yuuri did not stop running, slipping a little as his feet fell upon algae-slick stones and sheer clamshells, and he ignored the prick in his baby toe of an irate crab who he had disturbed with his running. His breath was starting to hurt, like a knife digging in between his ribs, and he almost laughed—how was it that he couldn't run forty feet without having difficulty, but could dive to seemingly impossible depths with no trouble at all?

To Yuuri, it was yet further proof that the sea welcomed everyone into her embrace, regardless of who they were.

 

When Yuuri reached the cave, he almost fainted as shock and excitement overwhelmed him. Despite knowing what he might find upon arrival, it still managed to startle him into speechlessness.

Viktor was still _beautiful._

His tail was below the water line, fanning lazily in the waves, brighter than silver. The scales that connected his bottom and top halves looked like diamonds fused into his fair skin, and it seemed to ripple with muscle.

Viktor was lying back against the stone floor of the cavern, his short, bowl-cut hair fanned across the dark stones carelessly, his arms sprawled out in a position of seemingly unintentional submission, and he smiled when he saw Yuuri, his eyes glinting with silent joy.

Without uttering a single syllable, Yuuri could all but feel Viktor's desire for the human to come nearer.

Yuuri stepped from the edge of the beach and into the cavern. Makkachin was flopped down, just out of reach, with his tail wagging furiously, and creating a rhythmic  _thump-thump-thump-thump_ against the damp cave floor.

“You came back,” Viktor said, sliding up elegantly into a sitting position, and his eyes seemed to glitter again, drawing Yuuri in.

“The ocean is like home to me,” Yuuri said, stepping towards Viktor with equal parts anticipation and nervousness. “I'll always come back. But...I hurt my throat when you dove me down deep, and I needed to go to the hospital to fix it.”

“What is...haws-petal?” Viktor asked, and Yuuri bit his lip, doing his best not to laugh at the sweet, almost childlike curiosity in the merman's voice.

“It's...” Yuuri paused pondering how to best respond while he sat down near to the merman. “It's a place of healing; where people go to get better.”

“I know healing!” Viktor said, and offered Yuuri a bright smile, and grabbed a broken piece of shell off the cave floor. Before Yuuri knew what was happening, he watched Viktor dig the shard into his arm, and Yuuri saw a bead of blood surface upon his white skin.

“What are you doing?!” Yuuri squawked, but Viktor's relaxed, reassuring smile never wavered, and before Yuuri's eyes, he saw the skin knit itself back together, and Viktor rinsed the blood off his arm in the water.

“Surface heals us,” Viktor explained. “If one of my people are hurt, we must get them to the surface, because _Aksha_ heals us.”

“What's _Aksha_?” Yuuri asked, and Viktor blinked at him, as though he'd been asked a simple, childish question, like why the sky was blue.

“ _Aksha_ is... _Aksha_ ,” Viktor replied, gesticulating awkwardly, as though he couldn't find the right words. “He gives us breath. _Tama_ gives us our fins, but _Aksha_ gives us breath. Only breath can heal us. If we hurt ourselves too deep, we become the dust in the current.”

“I know about that,” Yuuri said with a small smile, “we call it _detritus_.”

“det-right-us,” Viktor enunciated carefully, his expression thoughtful. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you call it that?”

“I...” Yuuri trailed off, and laughed. “I honestly don't know.” He coughed, nervousness setting in a little as he gazed at Viktor. It all felt so _surreal._ “So...erm...are Aksha and Tama your deities?”

“What is a deity?” Viktor asked, and cocked his head to the side like a curious puppy.

“Oh, erm...” Yuuri trailed off, and once again racked his brain for a suitable explanation. “The ones who made you. Wait, no, not really _you_ -you, but the one who created your species.”

“Oh, I see,” Viktor said, and nodded. “Yes. The first merpeople were born of rage, of Aksha and Tama's vengeance upon Men for taking from the sea indiscriminately. I believe you know them as Sirens.”

“Yes, I know them,” Yuuri said with a small nod, and Viktor smiled, as though pleased. “Though, I do not think I have heard that version of the story before.”

“The Greeks got many things wrong,” Viktor said with an affectionate smile that made Yuuri's heart beat a little faster. “It was foolishness that made them dash their boats to pieces on the rocks, not our voices luring them in. And we never ate any man, no matter what your stories say.”

Yuuri did not quite know what to say to that. Viktor's beauty had lured him in long before he'd heard him speak, and he could imagine that hearing him sing—that is, if he could, he wasn't sure if it was a universal talent—he would probably do something just as stupid in order to get close to him.

“Um, was there anything the Greeks got _right?_ ” Yuuri asked, shifting a little closer to Viktor, his movements uncertain, and he was gifted with the merman's cheeks dusting a faint pink.

“Very, very little,” Viktor admitted, chuckling a little as he looked down, and his cheeks flushed a deeper red. “Um, Yuuri, what are you doing?”

“Doing?”

“You moved closer,” he said, pointing down to where Yuuri's thigh was now mere inches from Viktor's silvery tail. “Why?”

“Sorry,” Yuuri said, flushing himself as he scooted back a little. “I just...being near you makes me feel...good. Did I make you uncomfortable?”

“No,” Viktor replied at once, shaking his head, but the way his tail flicked at the same time made it seem as though Viktor was maybe telling something of a white lie—the movements reminded Yuuri of an agitated sea creature, not a relaxed one. “I was just worried that you were going to kiss me.”

Yuuri blinked.

“Worried?” he echoed, and Viktor nodded. “Why would that worry you?”

“Because...because...” he laughed nervously, and shook his head. “I'm not supposed to talk about it. But you shouldn't kiss me, even if you really want to.”

“Well, lucky for you, I am only interested in humans,” Yuuri replied, trying to sound aloof and unbothered by this, but inside, he felt crushed. _Of course_ someone like Viktor would not want him near him—how could he have been so _stupid?_

“You shouldn't kiss me because something will happen,” Viktor said in a rush, reaching for Yuuri desperately, and he caught his hands. Unlike before, this time Viktor's skin felt soft, and almost human-like, but still cold to the touch. “I don't want bad things to happen to you, Yuuri.”

“You...know my name?” Yuuri asked, faltering in his plans to get up and leave. He couldn't recall telling Viktor his name.

“I heard your humans call you that,” Viktor explained. “Is that not your name?”

“No, it is,” Yuuri replied, relaxing a little, though he still hurt from Viktor's rejection. He thought Viktor actually _liked_ him. Why would he reject him so suddenly?

“You're still upset,” Viktor said, stating it, rather than forming it into a question.

“More confused, I guess,” Yuuri replied, wincing a little. “When humans kiss, nothing happens at all.”

“It is different for me,” Viktor said, his voice firm and oddly forceful. “We _cannot_ kiss.”

“I—I better go,” Yuuri said suddenly, his voice shaking a little as he stood up abruptly, unwilling to be drawn back in, only to be reminded that he was somehow inferior to the merman. “Makkachin, let's go.”

The dog whined, and buried his face in his front paws, while he snuggled into Viktor's side. Viktor looked upset and confused, as though he didn't understand why Yuuri wanted to leave all of a sudden. Looking at Viktor made Yuuri's heart ache, and all of a sudden he wanted nothing more but to get away from the beautiful merman.

“Makkachin,” Yuuri said again, “let's _go_.”

The dog whined again, but got up and shuffled over to Yuuri slowly, while Viktor's expression fell, like his heart had been broken.

“Yuuri—” he began, but Yuuri shook his head, cutting him off.

“It doesn't matter,” Yuuri said, his voice still shaky as he tried to keep from crying. “I should go. My mother will worry.”

Makkachin finally reached him, and Yuuri hurriedly tugged the red leash from his pocket, and clipped it to the dog's collar.

Yuuri turned, trying his best to ignore the lost, forlorn look in Viktor's eyes as he rushed away.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Aksha and Tama and the lore surrounding them are my own inventions. Please do not use them without permission.


	5. Calling You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: And we're back! Thank you guys so much for your patience, and I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. The next update will be January 27th.

Chapter Five – Calling You

 

It was raining again.

Yuuri was curled up on his futon, a pillow hugged to his chest, and Makkachin asleep over his feet. A mug of half-finished matcha milk tea sat on his night table, and a discarded cup of instant ramen sat next to it, the noodles gone, and the remaining broth, like the tea, was cold and mostly untouched.

The sound of rain was normally calming for Yuuri, but with winter coming fast, they needed to dive as much as they could before it began to snow. However, it had been raining heavily for nearly a full two weeks, and the lack of visibility as well as the strong currents had made it dangerous to dive.

Yuuri rubbed at his arms, his skin chilled as he stared at the rain pelting his window. His thoughts were trailing back to Viktor yet again, and he hated how he was so incapable of ridding his thoughts of the achingly beautiful merman.

Why was Viktor so afraid of kissing him?

Was he really disgusted by Yuuri, as he'd first assumed, or was it something else?

Was there _another_ reason for it?

Part of Yuuri wanted to ask his mother, who seemed to know so much about merfolk, but part of him balked at the idea of discussing it.

In particular, the kissing part.

After all, neither of his parents were much for lectures on Safe Sex—as teenagers, books on safe sex mysteriously appeared in his and Mari's rooms, and that was it. Even that was more than what most of his friends' parents had done, and so Yuuri doubted that he could really talk about this with his mother without it getting painfully awkward. And going to his friends was even more impossible, considering Yuuko still believed that Viktor had been a hallucination, and not real.

As he mulled everything over, a soft tapping upon his door drew him from his thoughts. Yuuri glanced up in time to see his mother letting herself in, bearing a tray of steaming teacups and fresh taro mochi.

“Yuuri-kun?” his mother asked, smiling at him warmly, “you've been hiding in here for hours, and so I thought I'd bring you a snack.”

“Thanks, okaasan,” Yuuri said, and moved over to his desk, pulling up a spare seat so that his mother could join him. She carefully pushed aside his laptop, and set down the tray. Yuri picked up one of the little rice cakes, the taro making it a bright purple, and he bit into it, but the sweet treat did not cheer him up as much as he'd hoped that it would.

“Yuuri-kun, what's the matter?” Hiroko asked, her voice soft and sad as she spoke. “You've been miserable for days—weeks. What happened?”

“I just...” Yuuri sighed, and trailed off. “I had a—a...misunderstanding. And I thought...but then...” he shook his head, and sighed again. “It doesn't matter. It's over now, gone.”

Hiroko was eyeing him suspiciously. Her expression was still warm, but her gaze still held a measure of curiosity, putting the pieces of Yuuri's jumbled explanation together as only she could. Her eyes shifted from Yuuri momentarily, then to the window. Her eyes widened incrementally, as though she understood something, but whatever it was, she didn't say.

Instead, she returned to her tea, sipping it in peaceful quiet, it broken only by the gentle rush of rain as it pelted the roof and windows of their house.

When they'd both finished, Hiroko patted Yuuri's shoulder once before she gathered up the tray while she said, “be sure to take Makka for a walk when the rain lets up, all right?”

“I will, okaasan,” Yuuri promised, smiling a little as he spoke. “And...thank you for the tea.”

His mother offered him a warm smile, and slipped from the room.

 

~*~

 

Later, when the rain had softened to somewhere between a light drizzle and a torrential downpour, Yuuri donned his coat and boots, picked up his umbrella, and leashed Makkachin for his walk.

The dog was excited, his tail whipping back and forth in a blur, though he remained eerily still as Yuuri leashed him, which was a far cry from the other dogs he'd had in his life—Vicchan had been a terror to leash up, excitedly rolling on his back and playfully nipping at Yuuri's hands, blissfully unaware that he was making it next to impossible to get the leash on.

In comparison, Makkachin was almost unnervingly well-behaved, especially for a stray. If anything, it made the process of getting him out the door fairly quick, and he trotted happily at Yuuri's side as they walked, enjoying the rain much more than any of the other pedestrians that Yuuri spotted as they went.

Makkachin was behaving himself, that is, until they got within sight of the beach, when he began to whine and tug on the leash, clearly longing to go down onto the sodden sand.

“Oh, Makka, no,” Yuuri said with a small groan as he tugged on the leash, which made the dog only whine and tug more insistently. “Come on, Makka, not today— _ah!_ ”

Without warning, the red leash unwound from around Yuuri's wrist, and with a triumphant bark, the dog took off towards the choppy sea at full speed.

“ _Makka!_ _Get back here!_ ” Yuuri shouted as he ran after him, even as Makkachin splashed into the shallows and began to paddle off, completely ignoring Yuuri's shouts as he played in the water.

Thankfully, Makkachin did not go out far, and seemed to be keeping himself parallel to the shore, which made it easy for Yuuri to grab hold of the soaked leash and drag the dog back to shore. Yuuri was too annoyed at the creature to pay much heed to his puppy dog eyes as he tugged him in, panting sharply as he glared at the creature with annoyance.

“ _Bad dog,_ ” Yuuri admonished between pants, gripping tight to the wet leash, while the waves rushed lazily over his boots. He pointed at Makkachin as he spoke, and the dog let out a small, pitiful whine. “No ocean today, I can't believe you— _what the...?_ ”

Yuuri's rebuke was suddenly cut short when the next roll of the tide came in, but it was unlike any wave he'd ever seen. The wave was gentle and still fairly benign, despite the rough waters farther from shore, but the wave seemed to have taken the form of a human hand, crashing over Yuuri's feet like a normal wave, not grabbing him, or pulling, or doing much of anything really.

Except deeply unnerving him.

Quickly, Yuuri backed up, hurrying far up the beach and out of the water's reach, and yet still he could see _that hand_ , reaching out with the waves, before it dissolved into the dark sand, as though it had never been there.

“Come on, Makkachin,” Yuuri said, his voice breathless with fright. “Let's go.”

 

~*~

 

“ _Okaasan?_ ” Yuuri called as he stepped inside, using the towel by the door to hastily dry off Makkachin before he unhooked him and let him bound deeper into the house, and listened for his mother's response.

“Yuuri-kun? Are you back?”

Her muffled call came from their private dining area; Yuuri quickly shed his coat and boots, and set aside his umbrella before he followed the sound of her voice.

He found his mother and Mari sharing a platter of _onigiri_ , Mari pointedly picking out the _umeboshi_ from hers before she ate the rice plain.

“Yuuri!” his mother cried, smiling warmly, “welcome back. Did you have a good walk? Come and sit, one of the guests decided that they didn't want their _onigiri_ , so your nee-chan and I are sharing them. Do you want one?”

“Er...um...I...” Yuuri said, still breathing a little laboured as he thought to what had happened. No matter how many times he recalled it, the scene was just as horrifying as the first time he had witnessed it of those phantom hands trying to grab at him. Now, in the warmth of his family's dining room, it was harder to believe that it actually occurred—it felt more like some sort of wild nightmare.

“Yuuri?” Mari asked thickly around a mouthful of rice. “Are you okay in there?”

“I...don't know.”

“You don't know if you're okay?” she asked, arching a brow, and Hiroko frowned at her.

“Mari-chan, you take the rest of the _onigiri_ ,” she said, “and let me talk to your brother in private.”

Mari did not look particularly offended by the dismissal as she shrugged a little, scooped up the platter, and headed towards her bedroom.

Yuuri stayed quiet, listening to the soft progression of his sister heading to her room. When the door finally shut distantly, ensuring that his sister could not overhear him, he sat down across from his mother, and she immediately took one of his hands.

“Yuuri-kun, what's the matter?” she asked. “You look like you've seen a ghost.”

“I think I saw...” Yuri trailed off, and shivered. “A—A... _Kappa_.”

“A Kappa, a water demon?” his mother asked, her tone surprisingly dubious. Yuuri found this odd, considering how readily she'd believed him when it had come to seeing Viktor for the first time. “Yuuri, are you _sure?”_

“Yes, I mean, no, I mean...” Yuuri trailed off and sighed heavily. “I think I did, I don't know what else it could be. I was walking Makka, and he got away from me and ran for the beach. I only caught up with him when he'd already gotten into the water, and then I saw...weird waves. They looked like hands, grabbing at my legs. And it was only around me that I saw these hands, nowhere else.”

“We can go to the temple tomorrow and get you a blessing if you want, but Yuuri, I think it might not be a Kappa,” his mother said, her tone wavering with uncertainty as she spoke. “Kappas are freshwater creatures—they hide in rivers, not the ocean, from what I remember. The nonstop rain...those watery hands...did you feel them grab you, or was it like a wave crashing over you, and merely bore the appearance of hands?”

“The second one,” Yuri replied, “It looked like some kind of ghost or something, but it felt no different than an ordinary wave when it touched me.”

“Ah,” his mother said, and smiled. Yuuri frowned; he did not think his mother's reaction was very appropriate. “I think I know what is going on.”

“You do?”

“Your merman is calling for you, Yuuri.”

 

~*~

 

Part of Yuuri didn't want to believe what his mother had told him.

Viktor was _calling_ for him?

If that was true, was it possible that Yuuri had completely misread the situation? Did Viktor not want Yuuri to kiss him for some _other_ reason?

_Maybe he has Merman Mono,_ Yuuri mused, and immediately giggled at the thought as he rolled over in bed, and gazed out of the window.

It was morning, and the rain was still coming down hard. As a result, the dark sky made it look more like it was ten at night, instead of ten in the morning. He'd breakfasted with his parents and sister, acting as though everything was normal, while his father teased them all warmly about how he never got to spend so much time with his fish family before, a term he often used in reference to their diving.

Yuuri, Mari, and Hiroko all laughed, before Hiroko added, “well, at least _someone_ is enjoying all this rain!”

It had been a pleasant morning, all things considered. After that, Yuuri had taken Makkachin for a quick walk, and they both returned to the onsen soaking wet and miserable.

Yuuri helped himself to one of the bento boxes, which he brought back to his bedroom to eat, and ate octopus-shaped sausages with rice and egg, and a wedge of apple shaped like a rabbit.

The nostalgic, almost childish lunch didn't help him to life his spirits as much as he hoped that it would, and with a huff of frustration, he glared at his window, and the pouring rain beyond it. If this really _was_ Viktor's doing, what were his intentions? Simply drown the world in his tears, except literally? It made no sense to him.

Quite suddenly, Yuuri was flooded with anger. Viktor couldn't put his family's livelihood on the line, keeping him from diving, just because he was having a temper tantrum!

Yuuri tossed aside his empty bento box as he stomped to the front door, his hands clenched into fists, and he yanked his jacket back on, still a little damp from his walk with Makkachin earlier. He jammed his feet into his boots, then without so much as a backward glance, he raced out of the door.

 

The rain was so heavy today that Yuuri could hardly see more than a few feet in front of his face. Cars and suicidal cyclists appeared out of the gloom like ghosts, and Yuuri had to leap out of the way more than once as a cyclist shouted, “ _oi! Abunai!_ ” angrily, before disappearing once more into the rain.

The trek felt even more dangerous as Yuuri came to the little stairwell that led from the road's sidewalk and down to the beach. Yuuri could hear the waves, and vaguely discern the surf crashing onto the shore, but beyond that it was dark; less like midday, and more like the middle of the night.

_This is so stupid, if I'm not careful, there is a serious chance I could drown doing this,_ Yuuri thought as he walked down to the water's edge, and shivered as like last time, phantom hands crashed over his boots, as though the ocean itself was begging him to return. He still felt no magical drag or pull, and so provided he didn't look directly at the chilling shape of the waves at his feet, it felt no different than an ordinary crash of sea water against the shore.

Yuuri walked the entire length of the coast, until it broke off into the _iwa-chu_ , which Yuuri carefully held on to as he circled it, stepping into deeper water as he made for the cave entrance, not allowing himself to take morechances than he had to, and risk being pulled out to sea.

The inside of the cavern was even darker than usual, and in fact, the interior was almost black.

Even so, Viktor's silvery fish tail seemed to almost illuminate the space.

It was as though he had not moved from his spot since the last time Yuuri had seen him. This knowledge both warmed Yuuri, and made his stomach churn with guilt in equal measure.

“Viktor?” Yuuri asked timidly, but the merman didn't move. He was lying in the cave the same way he had been last time, his tail submerged beneath the water, his upper half laying back against the rocks, and around him were shells—scallop, crab, oyster, mussel—small tells that Viktor had abandoned his post to eat, and no longer.

“My Ama,” Viktor replied, his voice soft and hopeful, while his bright blue eyes shifted from the cave wall, and up to Yuuri.

In the same moment, if Yuuri wasn't mistaken, he swore that he could hear the deluge outside begin to lessen.

“I...I don't really know why I'm here,” Yuuri admitted weakly, “my _okaasan_ sort of implied that...well...that the rain was you calling to me, but that can't be true...can it?”

“Some people call rain the mermaid's tears,” Viktor said, his tone still soft and almost timid. “I was beginning to worry that you did not understand my call.”

“How _can_ you, though?” Yuuri asked as he took a few steps forward, and stopped, still several feet away from the merman. “What if—if—if I decide I do not want to see you anymore, will you just drown the world in rain?”

“My tears are not for me losing you,” Viktor replied softly, gently. “They are shame at myself for saying things badly. You misunderstood me, and I felt terribly guilty about that. I would not force you to be here, especially if you do not wish to. But...I feel like I know you, Yuuri. The salt in your blood is sea salt. The breath in your lungs is the briny sea air. You live for the sea, as I do.”

Yuuri felt his heartbeat speed up a little, and quickly, he hurried over to Viktor. His feet and jeans were soaked to the bone, but he didn't care as he sat down in the water, mirroring the merman, and took one of his hands.

This time, his skin felt surprisingly warm and soft, though there still seemed to be something different about it—not bad, simply _different._

It reminded Yuuri, once again, that he was with a merman, not a human.

“I'm so sorry, Viktor,” Yuuri said, and felt his face flush as his voice wavered a little. God, how he _hated_ it when he got choked up like this. “I'm _really_ sorry. I thought...when you said that...it seemed like you didn't want me around, because I am a human.”

“No, Yuuri,” Viktor replied, leaning in a little, almost as though he intended to kiss him, then remembered himself, and eased back. Yuuri sagged with disappointment as Viktor explained, “I meant only that it would be a bad idea for you to kiss me. I have longed for you since that first time I saw you at the vessel.”

“Vessel?” Yuuri asked, blinking once, then smiled a little when he recalled the ship. “Oh, the shipwreck, you mean?” Viktor smiled, and nodded. Outside, the rain faded to a regular sprinkling, and was no longer a downpour.

“Yes, the ship-wreck,” Viktor replied, and laughed a little as he tested the new word out on his tongue. “Ship-wreck...I like that.”

“I think about it too,” Yuuri offered, while he tentatively threaded his fingers with Viktor's, and the merman appeared almost surprised by the act, as though he had never held someone's hand like this before. “I think about _you_ pretty much all the time.”

“Is that bad?”

“Honestly?” Yuuri said, smiling at him a little, “I'm not sure.”

Yuuri laughed, amazed at how easy it was to do so now, especially when Viktor smiled at him like that, as though he was beginning to understand that this time Yuuri would not leave him in tears—he was here to stay.

The sky began to lighten, and the rain had shrunk to a soft drizzle.

Yuuri reached out his opposing hand, and tentatively touched Viktor's cheek. Something about the merman made him feel so strangely confident, like he could do anything when Viktor had his eyes on him. Yuuri bit the inside of his cheek as his eyes fell (not for the first time) to Viktor's slightly parted lips.

_Would it really be so bad to kiss him?_ Yuuri wondered idly, his hand shifting a little to brush his thumb over Viktor's bottom lip; it felt very soft. _I can feel that I am attracted to him, and he seems to like me, and this just feels so good...why would kissing him be wrong?_

_Maybe he's just afraid,_ Yuuri mused, the silence heavy between them, but devoid of awkwardness. It was a pleasant silence, full of emotion that did not need to be said. _Maybe Viktor has just never been kissed._

Yuuri almost laughed at that; how was it that someone so beautiful has _never_ been kissed?

Yuuri made his decision, so fast in fact that he did not give himself time to really think it over with any modicum of clarity. He needed to do it—before Viktor talked him out of it again.

Viktor did not understand a lot of the human world, after all, and so it would be safe to assume he didn't understand kissing as well. It only made sense that he wouldn't understand it, and he might even be mixing it up with some other act, which seemed much more probable than kissing being _bad._

Yuuri took a breath, steeling himself for what he wanted to do. He lurched forward, sealing his lips over Viktor's in a searing kiss.

 

Almost immediately, Yuuri realised that kissing Viktor was a _very_ bad idea.

Pain flooded his entire body. Muscle spasms and cutting pain like a hot knife sinking into his skin seemed to touch every part of him, and he screamed as Viktor shouted, “ _Yuuri, no!_ ”

It could not have lasted more than thirty seconds before the pain became too much, and as the sun finally broke through the cloud cover above them, he blacked out.

 

~*~

 

When Yuuri woke, he felt weak and groggy. His head spun, and his body felt heavy, like someone had tied sixteen-ton weights to every part of him.

“Yuuri?” Viktor asked, his voice soft and laced with worry.

Yuuri groaned in response, but relaxed a little when he felt Viktor's hand run through his damp hair.

“It's all right, Yuuri, just take it slow,” Viktor said gently.

_Take what slow?_

The statement unnerved him, and he let out another small groan as he mumbled, “what happened?”

“I'm sorry,” Viktor said, his voice thick with remorse, as though he was barely holding back tears. “I'm _so_ sorry, Yuuri. I didn't want this for you—I tried to warn you, I'm sorry, I'm sorry...”

Viktor trailed off without really explaining, and Yuuri cracked his eyes open.

They were still in the cave, but it was night now. The sky was dotted with stars and the silvery crescent of the waning moon. It was no longer raining. Viktor was crying, and he looked inconsolable as he wept into his hands.

Yuuri didn't understand what was happening, not really.

He chose that unfortunate moment to glance down at himself, and nearly fainted at what he saw.

He was naked, his clothes stripped from his body and lay in tatters around him. His glasses had flown off his face at some point, and lay broken just beyond the shreds of fabric, the left lens cracked.

That, however, was not the true source of his horror. He felt almost sick with shock at what he saw; his mind was barely able to process what he was seeing, and know it to be true. This was some sort of wild fantasy—it _had_ to be.

A shiny black fish tail was protruding from his waist, right where his legs should have been.

 

 


	6. Lost at Sea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hey guys, thank you so much for the freakouts on the last chapter; it completely made my day :D Next update will be February 10th. Enjoy!
> 
> **Content Warning: Minor Blood/Injury**

Chapter Six – Lost at Sea

 

Yuuri's mind went white.

Everything was panic, shock, disbelief.

Aesthetically, at least, the tail was beautiful. It was black as pitch, with fanning fins that were fitted with sharp spines. The taut membrane between them was not black, like Yuuri had first thought, but closer to a deep, dark purple. The entire colour combination, almost amusingly, reminded Yuuri of a certain sea-witch from his childhood.

_Does that make me evil?_ Yuuri mused, trying to make himself laugh, but it didn't quite work, and something closer to a sob stuttered past his lips.

“Yuuri?” Viktor ventured, his voice soft and uncertain. The sound of his voice did little to break Yuuri out of his dumb shock, and he immediately shook his head.

“This isn't happening,” Yuuri said, his voice weak and shaky as he tried to keep from crying. “This—this _can't_ be happening. I—I need to go home.”

The small statement seemed to break Viktor, and his eyes widened as they glazed over with tears. He seemed to be both heartbroken and agonized by Yuuri's words, and without even saying anything, Yuuri knew what Viktor wanted to say—

_Yuuri, you can't go home._

Viktor took a slow, shaky breath. It seemed to Yuuri to be sincere anguish, as though he was genuinely horrified with himself that he'd stolen Yuuri's humanity from him.

“I'm so sorry, Yuuri,” Viktor said, his voice weak and broken, and he seemed unable to look at Yuuri as he spoke. “If I'd known that you'd do that, I would have tried to warn you. I'm sorry. I'm _so_ sorry. Please, believe me.”

“But...I barely know you,” Yuuri said, and he felt his heart clench when Viktor bowed his head guiltily. “How do I know you didn't want this all along?”

“I can't, that is part of the problem,” Viktor replied, his voice still thick with emotion. His head was still bowed, and he spoke to his tail. “I suppose...I'll need to prove it to you.”

“No,” Yuuri said, shaking his head, “you don't need to. I better...I—I need to go home. You can make all this up to me later.”

“You _can't_ , Yuuri,” Viktor said softly, his voice agonized, as though the words physically hurt him to say out loud.

“Why not?” Yuuri challenged, “I've seen it in movies. I'll just...” Yuuri trailed off as he pressed his palms to the hard stone, ignoring how his palm cut on the razor's edge of a discarded clam shell that he hadn't noticed as he hefted himself up and out of the water.

“Yuuri, _don't!_ ” Viktor cried in horror, his eyes wide. Yuuri ignored him, all his focus on keeping himself above the water line as he dragged himself ashore. His eyes were bulged with the strain; the tail felt _much_ heavier than he'd expected it to be. It felt as though the new part of his body weighed a few hundred pounds on its own, far more than Yuuri would have expected for such a slender body part.

Yuuri's arms shook as he took the first tentative step forward using his hands, while Viktor continued to plead with him to stop. However, Viktor never once touched him, though it seemed to be a close thing as he fidgeted in the water and continued to beg Yuuri to stop.

It was slow-going; the cave floor was covered in discarded clam shells, fish bones, and razor-sharp mussels, which clung to almost every surface of the cavern. Yuuri's hands were already covered with a number of tiny, paper-thin cuts, which stung every time he touched the stone.

After several long minutes of struggling, Yuuri finally made it ashore, and out of reach of the tide.

“Yuuri, _please_ ,” Viktor begged, lurching onto the shore, but he didn't dare leave the safety of the water. “You'll hurt yourself if you stay out there. You could...” he trailed off, and shook his head, as though it was too painful to say out loud.

“No, I've seen it in books and movies,” Yuuri replied panting a little as he tried to ignore the stinging pain in his hands, “if you dry out, you turn human again.”

“ _What?!_ ” Viktor sputtered. “That is...that's not...Yuuri, if you stay out of the water, you will _die_.”

Yuuri ignored him; he _knew_ he was right, he just needed to prove it. There were so many legends of merpeople turning human, it _had_ to be right.

Yuuri waited, watching his skin slowly air-dry as he caught his breath, while in the background Viktor continued to plead with him to get back into the water. Viktor was thrashing, trying to splash him, but was unable to get the water even close to where Yuuri lay.

Abruptly, Yuuri's tail twitched. It was an unconscious movement, one which raked Yuuri's sensitive flesh over the sharp rocks and various shell fragments, slicing the flesh open, and making him gasp in pain.

“ _Yuuri!_ ” Viktor cried despairingly, but Yuuri was unable to respond as another spasm coursed through his tail, more violently this time, not unlike a fish flailing helplessly on the deck of a ship.

Suddenly, Yuuri's tail was on fire. It wasn't simply _painful_ , but it truly felt as though someone had dropped him into a volcano. His skin tightened and cracked, while he continued to jerk and spasm violently, blood beginning to pool under his tail as he wept, and began to scream in pain.

It was nothing like before, which had been a deep, agonizing muscle pain when he'd transformed. This time, it was a burning pain, beyond anything he'd ever experienced before.

Yuuri glanced over to Viktor, only to find him hefting himself out of the water on shaking limbs. It appeared as though he'd been at it for a few minutes at least, given that he was almost completely out of the water, and he was already crawling towards Yuuri, face set with determination.

When Viktor reached him, he scooped Yuuri into his arms. Blood continued to leak from the open sores and cuts all over Yuuri's tail. Viktor did not seem to care that Yuuri's blood was getting all over him as he turned, and with a strength that did not befit his stature, he threw Yuuri and he landed back in the ocean.

Viktor wasted no time, and plunged back in after him. He grabbed Yuuri's wrist, and swam out past the corals at lightning speed, not even slowing down as they approached the dropoff, and he dived down deep.

Yuuri was too weakened to protest any of Viktor's actions. The pain and blood loss was too much, and he could do nothing but watch helplessly as the ocean world blurred past his eyes.

Unlike the last time Viktor had dove with him, Yuuri felt no pressure pain as the water darkened, and they plunged down hundreds of feet in a matter of seconds. Viktor kept diving; deeper, deeper, the water around them changing from a deep, dark blue to black.

When they were at least a thousand feet down—by Yuuri's estimation, at least—he heard a soft, chattering cry sound from far to his left.

Yuuri turned, and out of the gloom came a pod of bottlenose dolphins. In the black, they were little more than muggy shapes. They clicked as they surrounded Yuuri and Viktor, nudging them gently with their snouts as though in comfort or encouragement.

Echolocation clicks seemed to vibrate the black water around them, and Yuuri felt a wave of dizziness nearly consume him as he choked on a mouthful of blood, but kept it between his lips, forcing it down his throat and past his protesting uvula. He did not wish to risk a shark scenting his blood, though, in reality, it hardly mattered—he was covered in cuts and injuries, and it was something of a miracle that a shark had not yet come looking.

Viktor kept moving, his hand like a vice around Yuuri's wrist, guiding him deeper still. Despite how deep they had gone, Yuuri continued to feel none of the pressure pain he should have felt at such a depth, though the lack of vision was deeply unnerving. He clucked his tongue experimentally, but it did not yield any sort of echolocation results, nor did it sound anything like the noises the dolphins or Viktor were making. Viktor was one with the sea, and Yuuri felt like a silly child in comparison.

And really, he should have known better. Yuuri _had_ graduated from University with a degree in Marine Biology, after all. However, despite knowing that cetaceans used their nasal passage to make echolocation sounds, he could not replicate it, no matter how hard he tried.

Suddenly, Viktor veered away from the deep, drawing Yuuri from his thoughts as he tugged Yuuri towards a splace to the left of them. The dolphins abruptly dispersed, and Yuuri discovered that Viktor was leading him into a very narrow cavern, albeit much deeper down than the one he'd been in with Viktor before.

The blackness made Yuuri feel even more claustrophobic in the narrow space, but concurrently, he also noticed that his injuries no longer hurt.

While awkwardly following Viktor's lead into the confining space, Yuuri reached down with his free hand and smoothed it over his front, intending to check his legs— _tail,_ he reminded himself—for injuries, but couldn't quite gather up the nerve to touch his new appendage. However, his palm did not sting as it brushed against his stomach, or against the rocky walls of the tunnel as he felt his way along, and he could not fathom _how_ he was suddenly healed.

_Oh, wait, I remember,_ Yuuri realized belatedly, _Viktor told me. When a...a..._ person _is hurt, they dive deep to heal themselves._

Yuuri's stomach churned with guilt when even his thoughts refused to form the word _merman_ when applied to himself _._

Viktor led him along in relative silence for a while longer. With no light source it was difficult to tell for how long exactly, but after a time of nothing but the vibrations in the water of Viktor's echolocation clicks, the uncomfortably narrow space opened up into a small cavern.

In here, there was a soft source of light, a neon yellow-green coming off the walls of some sort of minuscule, bioluminescent creatures—algae or lichen. From his distance, he couldn't tell exactly. In addition, this cavern, like the one Viktor had taken him to before held a pocket of air, enabling them to surface and speak normally.

However, that was not what immediately drew Yuuri's attention upon entering the cavern.

Sitting in a semicircle, half in, and half out of the water, were five other merpeople.

“Oh look, the dogfish has a friend with him,” drawled one of them, who seemed to be the youngest. He was pretty, with a somewhat effeminate look to his facial structure, with blond hair pulled back into a braid, vibrant green eyes, and a tail of pale, ice-blue. He was partially curled up against another merman, this one with short dark hair, olive skin, and a black tail.

“Oh, he's cute, Viktor,” one of the others said, a mermaid with wavy raspberry-red hair that matched her tail, and next to her was another mermaid with inky black hair, a dusky blue tail, and dark, tan skin. Both of them were bare-chested, which, as ama, did not bother Yuuri—he'd seen more breasts in his time diving with women than he could count. However, it was a bit of a shock to see after growing up seeing cartoons and anime with mermaids wearing their shell-bras.

“Oh, this must be _the one_ ,” the last merperson said, a merman with black hair and a tail of midnight blue. His fingers were threaded together, and he'd pillowed his cheek against his clasped hands, as though the idea of _love_ was overwhelmingly wonderful to him.

“Everyone, this is Yuuri,” Viktor said, pulling Yuuri close, though his eyes were nervous, hesitant—as though he worried that Yuuri would not wish to be looked on by a bunch of strangers like this. A few of them swivelled their gazes between Yuuri and the blond merman, though Yuuri did not know why. “He's had a—a...a rough time.”

The blond arched his eyebrows, as though he knew that this was a massive understatement, while pointedly ignoring the brief stares the others had bestowed him with. To Yuuri's relief, Viktor did not explain further, as though he knew that Yuuri was not quite ready to share everything that had happened with a bunch of strangers.

“Yuuri, this is Yuri, Otabek, Mila, Sara, and Georgi,” Viktor said, pointing to each of them in turn as he spoke, and most of them smiled or lifted a hand in greeting, except Yuri, who regarded him as though he was something unpleasant he'd found under a rock.

Now, Yuuri understood the look. If two of them shared a name, it might make things a little complicated.

That was a worry for another time, however, as Yuuri recalled his manners, and refocused his attention on the merpeople who were still regarding him.

“Um...It's nice to meet you all,” Yuuri replied awkwardly, not quite certain what else he _could_ say in such a situation like this. Beyond the fact that it was a group of _merpeople_ , they were speaking English, a language that he understood fairly well. How was it that merpeople could speak _English_?

“Come sit down, Yuuri,” Viktor encouraged, helping him to swim over to an empty space next to Otabek and Yuri. “That was a bad...um...thing.”

“Let me guess,” Yuri drawled, “your True Love panicked and jumped out of the water like a cat.”

Viktor flushed scarlet at the blond's words, while Yuuri's eyes widened at Yuri's words.

_True Love?_

“Viktor?” Yuuri asked softly, “is there something you maybe forgot to tell me about this whole...thing?”

Yuuri swallowed thickly when Viktor wouldn't look directly at him. It was still hard to address the transformation directly, and so much had happened that Yuuri found himself caught in a strange state of non-reaction. He was calm simply because he had no idea _how_ to react. It was almost too much to take in, and Yuuri was genuinely amazed that he hadn't cracked yet.

As he waited for Viktor to answer, this serenity was helping him in leaps and bounds. At least if he was calm, he was less likely to hyperventilate until he fainted.

 “ _True Love's Kiss_ ,” Yuri interjected before Viktor could say a word. “You know, when a merperson kisses their True Love, it will transform them. You _do_ know, right?”

Yuuri was silent for a little too long, making it clear that he did _not_ know. In response, the young merman reached over to smack Viktor over the head, making Viktor yelp in surprise and pain.

“ _Yuri!_ ” Viktor squawked as he lifted a hand to his head, and massaged the spot. “That _hurt!_ ”

“You are a complete _idiot_ , Viktor!” Yuri shot back angrily. “Are you seriously telling us that you found your True Love, and _failed_ to tell him what would happen if you two kissed?”

“Yakov always told us not to!” Viktor protested, and ducked when Yuri moved to hit him again. “ _Remember?_ He always told us to never tell a human what our powers are, _including_ True Love's Kiss.”

“Yeah, well, Yakov can be an idiot,” Yuri replied. “ _I_ told Beka _way_ before we kissed,” he added, splaying a possessive hand across the merman's jet-black tail, and Otabek smiled a little, as though he was proud to belong to Yuri. “Didn't I, baby?”

“Caspian Sea, fifty years ago,” Otabek confirmed with a small nod. “You got all tangled in my fishing net, and you were _so mad_ at me...after that was all settled, they were pretty much the first words out of your mouth.”

“Same with us,” Mila added, threading her fingers with the other woman's, Sara. “I was in Milan with my family about ten years ago, and I sort of... _bumped_ into Sara when I was diving, and she told me right away.”

“I...but...he...” Viktor looked left and right, horror registering in his eyes as he gazed back at Yuuri again.

Yuuri watched him carefully. Being ama, he'd learnt early on to notice tiny things. When one needed to watch out for sharks and other such predators, you learnt quickly how to be attentive to detail.

In Viktor, much to Yuuri's relief, he saw no lie in his eyes. True, he could be wrong—Viktor might be an amazing liar, but Yuuri didn't think so. Viktor _did_ warn him, Yuuri hadn't listened, and then Viktor learnt that none of his companions (Pod? School? Shiver?) felt the same way, and was appropriately horrified at himself. It was an odd sort of relief, though unfortunately, it didn't make accepting the situation any easier, either.

Or better yet, reverse it.

“Oh, merciful Tama,” Viktor moaned, “Yuuri, I cannot even begin to...oh, this is terrible. I've changed you without your permission, I...”

Viktor trailed off, the look of abject horror never leaving his eyes. When he began to speak again, he simply repeated his apologies over and over, as though he had no idea how to make this better beyond repeating his regret, if for no other reason than to ensure Yuuri knew how sorry he was.

“Um, you know what, guys?” Mila said suddenly, her voice thick with false cheeriness. “It's probably late enough to go hunting. Come on, let's leave these two alone.”

The others murmured their agreement, and slipped deeper into the water, filing out through the narrow crevasse, each of them turning back to offer Yuuri a warm smile and a goodbye as they left, except Yuri, who merely eyed him curiously with neither approval nor rejection, before he flicked his silver-white tail once, and disappeared into the dark.

Yuuri waited for Viktor to speak once the others had left, but he seemed only capable of staring down at his tail, his eyes wide with horror.

“Everyone speaks English?” Yuuri asked suddenly in an effort to break through the tension, and Viktor glanced up to him, blinking with confusion.

“What?”

“You all...you spoke...um...Human English.”

“Oh,” Viktor paused, and shrugged. “Our shiver's leader, Yakov, he thought it was a good idea to learn it, since so many humans speak English, and the True Love's Kiss is becoming more and more common, though we don't know why. He thought if there was a common tongue, it would be less difficult for humans to integrate into our shiver.”

“Oh,” Yuuri replied, and frowned a little. It made sense, but the explanation had done little to relieve the tension that he felt between them. It was odd how _calm_ he still felt about all this—shouldn't he be panicking? This was _big_. Viktor had changed him without asking, but also without meaning to. Yuuri would never be with his family again, and he was hundreds of feet under water, and it all felt like _nothing_.

It should have been too much, too all-consuming.

Instead, Yuuri felt _nothing_.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Reference material for this chapter comes from The Little Guides: Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises, Edited by Peter Gill.


	7. Learning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Next update is scheduled for February 24th. Enjoy :)

Chapter Seven – Learning

 

When the other merpeople had at last returned to the cavern, they were carrying satchels over their shoulders. They appeared to be woven out of kelp, and they were filled to the brim with all manner of fresh seafood.

Yuuri accepted oysters and bits of octopus from them robotically. All of it was fresh and clean-tasting, and when Sara came across a pearl in one of her oysters, she cursed and threw it away, like it was worthless.

This sight brought a tickle of amusement to the pit of Yuuri's stomach; it was the first spark of emotion he'd felt in hours, though still not enough to truly draw him from his melancholy.

Viktor ate just as quietly as Yuuri. His head was bowed, and he was still weeping softly as he ate through his pile of seafood that the others had brought back.

 

After they'd finished eating, Yuuri listened to the others chat amiably about what they should do before they went to sleep. Georgi and Yuri wanted to go out and explore, but the others complained loudly of this, and eventually they seemed to settle on some sort of odd hackysack game, except with a clam instead of a bead-filled ball.

Yuuri watched them, not quite certain what he was feeling. He was surrounded by strangers who had overall treated him with nothing but kindness. However, he still felt awkward, given that he did not know them very well—not yet, at least. Worse still, the only one he knew wasn't speaking to him.

Yuuri felt lost.

 

~*~

 

“Hey, you.”

“His name isn't _hey, you,_ it's Yuuri, and you know it.”

“Whatever. _You_. Wake up.”

Yuuri groaned, and cracked an eye open. He could see Yuri hovering over him, looking annoyed (but then, he _always_ looked annoyed), and behind him was Mila, who seemed to be displeased with his attitude.

Yuuri sat up, and rubbed his eyes. Sleeping half-in, half-out of the ocean, with rocks in lieu of pillows hadn't exactly been the most comfortable sleep he'd ever had, and he felt a twinge of longing for his bed at home.

At least he hadn't woken up caked in salt, which was both a relief and a little curious, but Yuuri was still too groggy to question it.

“What is it?” Yuuri asked at last, recalling belatedly that Yuri had been barking at him to get up, and jumped a little when the blond threw a sack of mussels at him, which he caught on reflex.

“Eat, then we're going.”

“Where are we going?” Yuuri asked reluctantly as he began to crack into the mussels. Despite how exhausted he felt by everything that had happened, his appetite, oddly, hadn't dimmed at all.

“To teach you merpeople stuff, jackass,” Yuri snapped, making Yuuri jump a little from his acerbic tone. “It's supposed to be stupid Viktor's job to teach you this stuff, since he kissed you, but he's still acting like a little child, so it falls to one of us to do it for him so that you don't get eaten by something bigger than you because you're too _stupid_ to know your tail from your asshole.”

“You're so charming, Yurio,” Mila said from behind him, her arms crossing again, and Yuuri spotted a flush of red beginning to creep up the young merman's neck at the nickname. “Really, maybe we should just choose you to be our official welcoming committee from now on.”

“Shut up,” Yuri grumbled, crossing his arms huffily, and immediately Otabek swept in to touch his arm. Yuuri watched the older merman murmur something to the blond, then kiss his cheek, and Yuuri saw all the tension immediately begin to drain out of him.

“Come on,” Yuri said, more calmly, but still with a terse lilt to his voice. “Maybe by the time we're done, your boyfriend will be finished pouting.”

 

Yuuri ate a couple more mussels before he slipped farther into the water, up to his neck. He watched Yuri dive under, then Yuuri moved to follow him.

Outside of the cavern, even though Yuuri's body was telling him that it was morning, the deep sea was still black. Yuuri could faintly see the glint and glimmer of Yuri's pale tail for a moment, before it seemed to spasm, and disappeared.

For one panic-inducing moment, Yuuri thought that Yuri had taken off without him, but then he felt a small hand close around his wrist, and began to lead him upwards.

Yuuri tried to measure the feet they travelled, but lost count quickly. It felt impossible to keep track when everything around him was so dark, and the only certainty in this void was the hand at his wrist, guiding him.

The water was far from silent however, and Yuuri could hear the sharp clicks of Yuri's echolocation, the way he turned his body as he guided Yuuri, like he knew exactly where he was going, even without the benefit of being able to clearly see any landmarks, making Yuuri wonder if the merman was using magnetoreception to lead them.

At last, some light began to filter in from above, painting the water a dark blue. He could still _barely_ see Yuri, but as they swam higher, he felt a thrum of shock course through him when he at last saw Yuri clearly.

He was no longer the beautiful, fair-skinned merman with a white-blue tail. His skin and scales had changed to a bright red, like he'd spontaneously gotten a full-body sunburn.

Yuuri wanted to ask what was wrong, and why he looked like that, while Yuuri's own skin and scale tones had not changed at all. Unfortunately, given that they were still underwater, Yuuri couldn't speak. He couldn't even draw Yuri's attention with echolocation, given that no matter how hard he tried, he still could not replicate the submarine vocalizations of Yuri or the other merpeople.

Yuri led Yuuri over the dropoff and towards the reef. He pointedly avoided getting too close to shore, and Yuuri felt his heart ache as he spotted a few spearfishermen diving into the water, though they were too far for Yuuri to see their faces, and the sight of them invariably drew his thoughts back to his own family, and how worried they must be.

It had barely been a day, and he already missed them terribly.

 

Yuri tugged on Yuuri's wrist, as though he sensed his internal anguish, though Yuuri could not tell if the action was an attempt to urge him forward, or get him to knock it off.

When they finally surfaced Yuri had concealed them behind a tall pillar of rock, ensuring that any humans looking out to sea would not spot them.

Yuuri glanced down, and could easily see the wonderland of the coral reef about a hundred feet below them, though he could not help but shiver at the sight of his tail. It was still hard to believe that this was real, and not some sort of vivid dream.

“Okay,” Yuri began grumpily, drawing Yuuri out of his thoughts. “Like I said in the cave, Viktor is technically supposed to be doing this, but he's off sulking, so I have to do it. For some reason everyone thinks I need to talk to people more.”

Yuri rolled his eyes at this, a look of disgust crossing his expression. Privately, Yuuri wished Otabek was around to calm the merman down. He was like an angry sea urchin who only liked one person.

A person who was _clearly_ not Yuuri.

“What are we doing...exactly?” Yuuri hedged, and Yuri grunted, still angry.

“I'm teaching you merpeople stuff,” Yuri explained again, grumbling out the words impatiently while he flicked his tail with agitation. “How to echolocate, how to use your camouflage, how to use the earth to find your way, that sort of stuff. Viktor would _not shut up_ about you being a hunter, so I guess you don't need to know how to catch fish and stuff.”

“Hunter?” Yuuri asked, blinking bemusedly, but after a half-beat he nodded in understanding, realizing that Yuri had meant his diving with the ama. “Oh, right.”

Yuri rolled his eyes, shooting Yuuri a glare as though he thought that Yuuri was being stupid on purpose.

“Come on,” he said, his voice still stiff and terse. “Let's get this over with.”

 

~*~

 

Learning to be a merman, or _merperson_ , as Yuri kept calling it, was a lot harder than Yuuri had expected it to be.

There was no simple frolicking in the water, no swimming with dolphins (save for the few bottlenose dolphins who were hanging out nearby, whistling and chattering), and no treasure-hunting adventures with pirates or battles with sea-witches.

As it would turn out, accessing his new abilities was _hard._

“No, you're clicking with your mouth, _again_!” Yuri barked when they surfaced, and Yuuri scowled. The dolphins let out a barrage of chatter that sounded way too much like they were laughing at him, while Yuri flicked his tail with annoyance. “You use your _melon_ , _here!_ ”

Yuuri yelped as Yuri began to jab his face, poking him in the bridge of his nose, the lower part of his forehead, and his cheekbones.

“ _Stop it!_ ” Yuuri cried as he batted his hands away, and frowned at the blond merman. “I'm _trying_ , all right? It's easy for you, you were born this way. I haven't even been a...a...I haven't been _like this_ for a full day yet, remember?”

“Well, you better try harder,” Yuri grumped back at him, “because if you don't, I'll just leave you out here and you can find your own way home.”

Yuuri felt his throat tighten at the mention of _home_.

He glanced to the distant shore, empty now, and felt a great sadness begin to creep up on him. In particular when he knew that Yuri meant the cave deep beneath them, and not the little onsen that Yuuri had called home for so many years.

_They must be so worried when I never came home,_ Yuuri thought sadly, _okaasan, otosan, oneesan...I'm so sorry._

“Okay, let's...uh...try something else,” Yuri said abruptly, his tone awkward, as though he felt Yuuri's sadness, and realized that he had unintentionally been the cause of it. “Using the earth to find your way is easier. Let's do that.”

Yuuri turned his gaze away from the shore, and with his eyes downcast, he nodded.

 

Yuri guided Yuuri to a cavern that was hidden in the base of a cliffside. The rocks were so jagged here that no ship would dare get too close. Despite the churning waters amidst the rocks, inside the cave was fairly still, though Yuuri could still feel the faintest tug of the current the closer to the mouth he went.

“So...you want me to use magnetoreception, is that it?” Yuuri hedged, and Yuri blinked at him.

“Mag-what?”

“Megnetoreception,” Yuuri repeated. “When a creature uses the earth's magnetic field to navigate.”

“If that's what humans call it,” Yuri replied, shrugging, while he swam to a ledge where a long scrap of leathery-looking fabric was laying, though when Yuri picked it up, Yuuri realized that it was kelp, not fabric. “You use the earth to find your way, but former humans like you use your eyes and ears too much, so I'm going to blindfold you, and you're going to swim out of the cave.”

Yuuri looked around and blinked. _That's it?_

The cave wasn't exactly _big_ , perhaps ten feet wide at most. He was on the cusp of pointing this out when Yuri smirked, and motioned for Yuuri to follow him before he dove down into the sea's depths.

Yuuri upended himself, and quickly realized that he had indeed underestimated this cave.

Enough light filtered in from above that Yuuri could see down about a hundred feet, the blue glow illuminating the space as he swam around various schools of fish and other sea life, his eyes on the ocean floor, which was thick with all manner of creatures, like a little hidden coral reef, away from the prying eyes and greed of the human world.

Yuri stopped about a foot from the ocean floor, and motioned for Yuuri to come forward, just as a curious crab tried to reach up and snip at the blond's fins. He glared at the little creature, flicking his tail with enough strength to knock it away, and Yuuri watched with amusement as it toppled onto a flounder, and the flatfish darted off, presumably to find a less chaotic place in the sand to hide.

Yuri motioned Yuuri forward again, and Yuuri complied, rolling his shoulders with discomfort as Yuri wrapped the piece of kelp around his eyes, and tied it in place.

It was far less slippery than it should have been, and stayed in place as Yuuri tried to look around, only to find that the simple oceanic blindfold did indeed block out his vision entirely.

_Okay, so magnetoreception is what I am supposed to be using,_ Yuuri thought as he tried to force himself to relax. _Sharks have it, and so do birds, and insects...and it is the simple concept of using the earth's magnetic field to find your way, like GPS. I know how this works; I can_ do _this._

Yuuri wanted to breathe in and out to try and calm himself, but couldn't, not really. Instead, he settled for inhaling water and pushing it past his gills, which was calming, although not as satisfying as a good, deep breath may have been.

Yuuri tried to focus and do what he was supposed to do, when he realized something important, something he should have noticed right away.

_How_ was he supposed to know what to do?

Like with the echolocation, Yuri hadn't bothered to properly explain it.

Yuuri gritted his teeth, but tried to not feel too angry. If he was angry, there was _no way_ he'd be able to feel this thing out like he was supposed to.

Yuuri focused instead on the water. Warm but temperate, the tiny vibrations in the water, the stirring near his feet— _fins_ , he reminded himself—below of little creatures passing him by, the—

_Vibrations_ , Yuuri realized with a small jerk, _that has to be it_.

Yuuri shifted his focus entirely to the small, minute vibrations in the water. They were so faint that had he still been human, he may not have even noticed them. They felt at first confused, like a throbbing speaker in a car, sending information out in every direction all at once, but the more Yuuri focused on it, the more he _listened_ , the more sense they seemed to make.

Yuuri flicked his tail, following the vibrations tentatively, but when he did not run into anything he grew more bold, and swam a little more. The vibrations seemed to grow a little stronger, and he followed that pull, that _magnetic_ pull, higher, higher, until they veered away suddenly.

Yuuri's confidence eclipsed his uncertainty, and he followed the pull. He knew, instinctively, that he was going the right way.

Barely a minute later, Yuuri surfaced, and he felt himself being tugged again, but not by the vibrations.

By currents.

Strong currents.

He'd made it outside.

Yuuri yanked off his blindfold, and turned back to the cavern.

Yuri was sitting inside on a little ledge, seawater lapping over his tail, and he was smirking at Yuuri with an odd look of approval on his face.

“Not bad,” Yuri said when Yuuri swam back into the cavern and deposited the kelp onto the ledge next to Yuri. “Looks like you're not a hopeless case, after all.”

“I wish you would have _told_ me how to do it though,” Yuuri complained, frowning, and Yuri rolled his eyes as he slipped back into the water.

“You didn't need it,” Yuri pointed out. “Using the earth? It's _instinct._ If I dropped you in the middle of the sea right now, no land around, you'd be able to find your way back with _no problem_. Echolocation and camouflage is a little more...you gotta learn it. But using the earth is something that can't be explained, especially not to a human. They don't feel things the way we do.”

“I keep...”

Yuuri trailed off, and sighed. He glanced back to the cave entrance, his mouth twisted into a grimace. He couldn't see the shore from here, and he wasn't certain Yuri would understand his sentiment, nor his longing for _home_.

_I keep forgetting that I'm no longer human._

“Come on,” Yuri said, his voice gruff and awkward, as though he had no idea how to appropriately console Yuuri. “Let's go practice your echolocation some more.”

Yuuri sighed and nodded while he followed Yuri out of the cave and away from the cliff.

They headed back towards the pillar of rock they were at before, and Yuuri blurted out, “um...d'you...d'you think Viktor will be back by the time we finish?”

Yuri stopped, clearly having been on the cusp of diving. At first, he looked annoyed, then his expression shifted to something that seemed to teeter between annoyance and understanding.

“Honestly? I have no clue,” he replied while he shifted his gaze up to the early afternoon sky. “I know Viktor, and he's a _pain_ in the ass, and so _dramatic,_ but he's also not the kind to be cruel. He's not avoiding you intentionally to hurt you, I know that much. He's probably feeling guilty about taking your humanity away without your permission. Most likely, he just feels like you seeing him will remind _you_ of that, not the other way around.”

“So what should I do?” Yuuri asked, frowning at his companion. “I don't blame him for what happened...I mean, I kissed _him._ He didn't kiss me. He didn't steal anything from me, I just...I made a stupid decision, and he was trying to follow your customs. I mean, maybe I _should_ blame him, but...I don't. Honestly, it hasn't really sunk in yet, so I'm not really sure what I feel.”

“Focus on your echolocation,” Yuri suggested, his voice still a bit stiff, but less impatient, and more understanding. “You learn it, then you can go find him and tear him a new one for taking off on you. All right?”

Yuuri laughed a little, and nodded his head, making his companion's lips quirk into a small smile.

“Yeah,” Yuuri agreed, “let's do it.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: (end) In deep water, the colour red is virtually invisible, which is why Yuri's 'camouflage' is red, and mid-range water fish in 100-300ft of water like the red snapper are red. Source: Deep by James Nestor.  
> Source for magnetoreception: Deep by James Nestor  
> Source for location of echolocation organs: The Little Guides to Whales, Dolphins, & Porpoises Edited by Peter Gill


	8. Reconnection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Next update is scheduled for March 10th. Sorry for the slight delay, I've been sick all week x.x Enjoy! :)

Chapter Eight – Reconnection

 

Though Viktor returned in the evening after Yuuri's lesson with Yuri, and every day thereafter, this unfortunately did not mean that they talked at all.

Viktor stayed away from Yuuri, his eyes almost constantly red, as though he'd been crying. Each morning, Viktor would disappear into the dark water, and he would not return until well past nightfall.

 

“I feel like I've been abandoned,” Yuuri complained one day during his usual lessons, and Yuri rolled his eyes, visibly fed up of Yuuri complaining about Viktor. “I mean, I still don't blame him for what happened, but he still blames himself...what can I do?”

“Stop bitching about Viktor, for one,” Yuri replied tersely. “He'll get over it in his own time.”

“That's not as helpful as you think it is,” Yuuri countered with a frown. “I appreciate all your help, I do, but Viktor...I want _him_ to be the one teaching me, you know?”

“I don't _have_ to help you, you know,” Yuri griped as he shot Yuuri a glare. “If you'd rather have Special-Wonderful-Mister Perfect _Viktor_ help you, then go find him. I don't care. It gives me more time to do what I like instead.”

“Like what,” Yuuri shot back, “ _swimming?_ ”

“You think you're being funny, but you're really, really not,” Yuri retorted, and Yuuri huffed.

“ _Fine_.”

Yuuri turned, his gaze fixed on the distant shore. Fury radiated through him as he stared at the beach-goers while he tried to calm himself. However, his anger shifted to shock as an older woman wandered out onto the beach in full diving gear.

She was flanked by several others that Yuuri recognized immediately, and he felt his heart swell as he dove into the water and swam towards the shore without a second thought.

“Hey, _wait!_ ”

Yuuri ignored him, his gazed fixed on the shoreline, and his mother standing there with Yuuko, Mari, and his father, all of whom looked ready to go for a dive.

“ _Okaasan, Okaasan!”_ Yuuri shouted, forgetting he was underwater as he spoke, and the words escaped him as little more than a stream of bubbles as he sped towards the shore as fast as his fins would take him.

 

Regardless how fast he was however, Yuri was still faster.

Just as Yuuri made it past the dropoff and into the reef, Yuri seemed to dart out of nowhere, cutting off his path. He stopped so close to Yuuri that he was unable to stop or avoid him, and with a garbled yelp, he careened into the other merman.

As they tumbled, Yuri wasted no time and grabbed hold of Yuuri's wrist, and dragged him back down into the depths.

Yuuri fought Yuri all the way down, but the blond ignored him, dragging Yuuri all the way to the cavern. When they surfaced, Yuri immediately began to verbally berate Yuuri.

“are—you— _insane_?” Yuri demanded, jabbing Yuuri in the chest with every word. “Just because we had an argument doesn't mean I want you to get eaten by those barbarians!”

“That was my family, you...you...you...I'm _mad_ and can't think of a good insult, but _that_ is what you are!” Yuuri cried, making his companion huff and roll his eyes. “No matter if I have fins or feet, my family would never reject me, _or_ eat me!”

“You're a monster to them now, Yuuri, _we_ are your family,” Yuri replied impatiently. “You're whiny, and weepy, and annoying, but do you think I want to see you dead?” he demanded.

Yuuri opened his mouth to respond, but Yuri cut him off.

“Shut up,” he snapped, and Yuuri quickly shut his mouth, and glared at his blond companion. “The answer is _no_. I don't want you dead, you idiot. You're just upset because of Viktor, and no matter how awful his attitude is, that's no reason to endanger yourself.”

“You're not listening, Yuri!” Yuuri retorted, his voice cracking a little as he spoke. “My family are all ama, dating back generations. Ama are divers who work _with_ the sea, not against it. My mother thinks merpeople are amazing and wonderful. She would _never_ think less of me because of... _this_.”

“Sorry, Yuuri,” Yuri replied, crossing his arms, though to Yuuri he did not sound sorry at all. “That's not how it works. They're not your family anymore. You are _not_ allowed near them. Understand?”

Yuuri turned away from him without answering, and bit his lip, but that did not stop the angry tears from streaking his cheeks, and disappearing into the seawater.

 

~*~

 

Yuuri did not speak for the remainder of the day. He was too furious with Yuri, and he had a feeling that the little blond merman was not the only one who harboured such distrust for humans—likely, most of them did. As a result, he had no desire to confide in any of the other merpeople in their little group, either.

Yuuri picked at his food that evening. Mila and Sara had brought back a variety of small cephalopods, including young octopi and baby squid. The meat was tender and sweet, but in light of all that had happened earlier, even the choice seafood was not enough to lift Yuuri's spirits.

 

Yuuri watched the others eat and talk. Viktor was at the opposite end of the semicircle of their group, meaning that he was in actual fact closest to Yuuri, save for Georgi, who was next to Yuuri, though this seemed to be more of an attempt to keep Yuri and Yuuri apart than anything else.

Even with their physical closeness, Viktor did not look up at Yuuri once.

Heartbroken, Yuuri looked down to his uneaten food again, and swallowed a sob.

_I can't live like this,_ Yuuri thought miserably, _I can't live with people who barely tolerate my presence. I need to leave._

Decision made, Yuuri stuffed a small piece of octopus into his mouth, and tried not to let his thoughts show on his face.

 

Later that night, after he was certain that everyone was asleep, Yuuri slid deeper into the water silently, and disappeared beneath the water's surface.

Yuuri used his eyes to see and hands to move, doing his best to disturb the water as little as possible while he crawled through the cavern's tunnel. Only when he was deep enough that he could no longer see the light of the lichen did he flick his tail a little, picking up his pace.

Given that his mastery of echolocation was still weak, Yuuri instead used his hands to feel his way along, and when he reached the exit, he nearly fell out of it in shock as something bright darted past the cavern entrance.

_Bright_ was relative, given that it was clearly something bioluminescent, and the shape and size told Yuuri that it was a squid of some kind.

_It's big enough to be a danger if I get too close, and it's flashing, which means it's a warning to other squid,_ Yuuri theorized to himself as he watched it. _But it's something to follow to the surface; squid surface at night to feed, I know that. As long as I'm careful, I'll be okay._

Yuuri swam out of the cavern cautiously, turned, and followed the glow of the squid upwards.

As Yuuri moved and several long minutes passed in the dark with nothing bad happening, his confidence began to grow. The squid grew closer, and Yuuri was certain he would make it to the surface with no issues.

Suddenly, a loud barrage of noise flooded the water. It was loud, and caused Yuuri to clap his hands to his ears. It was like machine gun fire in its rapidity, but infinitely louder. For a moment, Yuuri could only remain stationary in the water, hands over his ears as he looked around the black water futilely, trying to discern where the sound was coming from, when he realized, to his horror, that it was coming from directly beneath him.

Panic overwhelming him, Yuuri took off as fast as he could at a forty-five degree angle away from the squid, and towards the surface at the same time.

Yuuri turned back in time to see the faint light of the squid disappear as something huge, as big as a cruise ship, just barely missed him as it homed in on its prey.

Yuuri's mouth dropped open.

_A sperm whale._

Given that it was alone, Yuuri could safely assume that it was a bull, and he watched in quiet awe as the creature flicked its tail a few times, clicking more slowly now that it had caught the squid, surfaced briefly, then disappeared back down into the deep.

Yuuri remained frozen for a few more moments as he stared at the space where the whale had disappeared before he remembered how foolishly vulnerable he was floating in the open like this, and he hastened to the surface.

 

When Yuuri at last emerged from the depths, he hurried for the coral reef, and away from the dropoff. Floating above a deep crevasse had made him uncomfortable even when he'd been human, but moreso now when he could do so little to escape the ocean's dangers.

Relief seemed to flood Yuuri's body, like a cooling salve on a burn as he made into the safety of the shallower water. As he turned, intending to dive again and swim for shore, an abrupt, unexpected voice stopped him short.

“Are you leaving?”

The sudden voice was small and vulnerable. Despite this, Yuuri recognized it at once.

“Have you given me any reason to _stay_?” Yuuri asked as he turned to face Viktor, who bowed his head guiltily.

“I'm so sorry, Yuuri,” Viktor said sadly, “I just feel so horrible about doing this to you, when it's obvious that you didn't want it—”

“—Viktor, stop blaming yourself,” Yuuri interrupted, frowning at the silver-haired merman who had so effectively stolen his heart, and then broken it. “Please, just _stop_. What you are doing now, this avoidance thing, it hurts more than anything else. If you want to fix things, I mean, _actually_ fix things, talk to me, don't ignore me. I do not blame you for what happened. Maybe I should, but I don't. What would help more than anything would be if someone who _wasn't_ a stranger was helping me through all this. Viktor, I _need_ you.”

“I'm sorry, I just...I don't understand,” Viktor hedged, inching closer to Yuuri as he spoke. “If you don't blame me, then why are you leaving?”

“Not everything is about you, Viktor,” Yuuri said, and offered him a small, humourless smile. “I was alone, and barred from seeing my family again. Why would I stay?”

“It is the way most merpeople live,” Viktor said. “I have told you before how we used to be hunted. Most turned merpeople have been shunned by their families, and so most will not dare go near humans, even ones that they used to know.”

“But I am from ama, you _know_ that,” Yuuri reminded him, attempting to speak patiently, but some of his frustration was beginning to bleed into his tone. “My own _mother_ has even seen the merpeople.”

“She has?” Viktor asked, his eyes widening a little.

“In Crete, in the '70s,” Yuuri explained. “She saw a shiver of mermaids who dove when she got too close. The way she tells it, it never sounded like they were afraid of her. And when I first told her about you, she believed me without batting an eyelash.”

“And you want to see your mother again, and Yuri won't let you, is that all of it?”

“Yeah, I—wait, how did you know about Yuri being so mean?”

“Yuri is mean with everyone. It doesn't mean he dislikes you, he's just always been a grumpy person,” Viktor replied with a small, rueful smile. “It's not you making him mad, I promise you that. In this case, it was worry for you. I overheard him complaining to Otabek about it earlier.”

“But, Viktor, _you know_ where I come from,” Yuuri reminded him, determined that they stay on topic and not veer off and start discussing Yuri and his bad attitude. “My okaasan would still love me, even like this. I need to see her, so that she knows I didn't just disappear one day, and never came back.”

“I know, but...” Viktor trailed off, his eyes troubled, and shook his head as he offered Yuuri a small smile. “No. You are right.” He paused again, this time to reach forward and gently clasp Yuuri's hand. Yuuri smiled, and squeezed the limb gently. “Come on, let's go see if your family is still there, and if not, we can stay in the cave near the shore until morning, and look again.”

“You'd go with me?” Yuuri asked, and flushed at how small and hopeful he sounded as he spoke.

“I should have helped you before, Yuuri, but I want to help you now, if you want me to,” Viktor said, his free hand moving to gently touch Yuuri's cheek, and Yuuri felt his heart skip a beat. Ever since everything had happened, beyond getting his humanity back, _this_ is what he had wanted most of all.

“Please,” Yuuri replied, inching a little closer, and he shivered with delight when he felt the scales of Viktor's tail slide against his own, making him gasp.

“My turn,” Viktor whispered, his hand sliding from Yuuri's cheek to the back of his neck. Yuuri parted his lips to ask what Viktor meant, but in that same moment Viktor leant in, and captured Yuuri's lips in a tender kiss.

Yuuri coiled his tail around Viktor's on instinct rather than conscious thought, his hand disentangling from Viktor's in order to wrap both arms around his neck, and he drew him closer.

Viktor let out a small moan, his hands dropping to Yuuri's waist, holding him close as they drew out the kiss. Yuuri almost wanted to weep from how good it felt, and though he knew one kiss would not fix everything that had happened, it was certainly a good start.

“Okay,” Yuuri whispered against Viktor's mouth. “That was...a _very_ good turn.”

Viktor laughed, and moved in to kiss him again. Yuuri let him, revelling at how warm and safe he felt with Viktor, and how he no longer felt quite so alone out here in the unforgiving sea. They kissed, holding each other close, until the sperm whale from before surfaced again, making Yuuri jump a little in surprise.

“Relax,” Viktor murmured, smiling as he watched the whale, and he ran a hand up and down Yuri's bicep, perhaps in what he thought was a calming motion. “It's just a whale.”

“I know he means us no harm,” Yuuri replied, smiling faintly. “He's a beautiful creature, but still very big. A sixty-foot whale is nothing to scoff at.”

“How do you know he's a he?” Viktor asked, his tone light, and almost teasing.

“Adult male sperm whales travel alone outside of breeding season,” Yuuri replied, shrugging a little. “My mother has dived with them before, so I know in the right circumstances they're not dangerous, and I studied them in school. They've always been one of my favourite species of whale.”

“School is...where humans learn things,” Viktor said, and Yuuri nodded. “You go to school to learn about the sea?”

“Yeah,” Yuuri replied, smiling a little. “I studied Marine Biology...learning all about all the different species in the ocean, stuff like that. But my specialty was Hadal research, or stuff at the Hadalpelagic level, at twenty-eight thousand feet.”

“Is that deep for a human?” Viktor asked, and Yuuri laughed.

“Yeah, deeper than that whale there can go. About three times as much, if my math is right.”

“That is _very_ deep,” Viktor agreed, and Yuuri smiled a little.

“I always enjoyed studying marine life,” Yuuri offered, and Viktor smiled sadly.

“Now you live amongst them...you _are_ one of them. Is that good or bad for you?” Viktor asked, his arms tensing around Yuuri's waist, and Yuuri smiled weakly as they both watched the huge creature's back slide through the water as it turned and dove back down.

“Honestly? I don't know,” Yuuri replied, at last turning back to Viktor, one hand splayed across Viktor's chest as he gazed up into his bright blue eyes. “I'm still trying to figure that out.”

“I'll help you,” Viktor said, moving in to kiss Yuuri again. “I won't disappear again, I promise.”

“Can I trust you to keep that promise, Viktor?” Yuuri asked, biting his lip a little as he stared at his companion. Viktor smiled sadly again; he did not appear wholly offended, as though he thought the comment was completely justified.

“I promise, Yuuri,” Viktor replied, his voice thick with certainty, making Yuuri's heart soar. “I won't disappear on you. Not again.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Just a few notes on the sperm whale scene for any marine biology nerds who happen upon this story: Yes, generally, sperm whales are usually seen/observed in pods around Sri Lanka and/or other areas of the Indian Ocean, in particular during the breeding season. However, lone adult males outside of a breeding group can travel as far as the poles, and according to my research, are seen in all oceans. Also, though the clicks of whales are often viewed as soft and/or communicative, Sperm Whales are among one of the loudest mammals on earth, clocked in at 236 decibels at their loudest, which is louder than two thousand pounds of TNT blowing up 200 feet away from you. 
> 
> Sources: Deep by James Nestor, Whale Watcher by Trevor Day, Voyage to the Whales by Hal Whitehead, The Little Guides: Whales, Dolphins, & Porpoises Edited by Peter Gill, and The Sea Guide to Whales of the World by Lyall Watson.


	9. Humans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Next update is scheduled for March 24th. Enjoy! :)

Chapter Nine – Humans

 

As Yuuri and Viktor swam over the dropoff and into the reef, they wove through shivers of uninterested reef sharks, past schools of huge wrasse, over dark coral, and closed up anemones. Viktor steered them clear of the few boats on the water, with the words _Japan Coral Research Unit_ stamped on the side. To Yuuri, it seemed foolish to research coral reefs in the middle of the night, but perhaps there was a reason for it, though he had no idea what that could be.

Viktor led him to the familiar cave near the beach, the _iwa-chu,_ and they huddled up inside, pressed tail-to-tail as they sat in waist-deep water and awkward silence.

“So...what now?” Yuuri asked after a moment, and Viktor shrugged his shoulders.

“We wait for your family to come back?” Viktor offered hesitantly. “It's probably best to wait until those boats are gone. Every merperson knows to avoid the ones with those symbols on it.”

“Symb...oh, you mean the letters on the side?” Yuuri asked, and Viktor nodded. “Why's that?”

“Once, one of our shiver got too close to one of those boats,” Viktor explained, his eyes distant and dark. “He was curious, because he'd never seen one before. Before he could react, he was netted and dragged aboard. While he writhed from pain of his tail drying out, he was doused in icy salt water and held down while they did all sorts of things to him, and talked in another language, one which he did not understand. Then they pierced his tail with an object. It was painful, and heavy, and light blinked on it in red, and the object made it very difficult for him to swim. It took all of us to break it and get it off. If it had stayed on, he would have died. With the object there, he was too slow with that thing to escape sharks and orcas who preyed on us, so it had to go, no matter what. It was a very traumatic ordeal, and after that, we all made sure to avoid those boats at every cost.”

Viktor bowed his head, and Yuuri frowned, uncertain what to say. From his explanation, it was clear that the merman in question had been hauled aboard a research boat for study, and had then been tagged with one of the older, more invasive and permanent tags that researchers used to use. In this case, Yuuri had a feeling that pointing all this out would not change Viktor's feelings on the matter, understandably so, and he, too, bowed his head.

Which was when Yuuri noticed a tiny, circular scar at the base of Viktor's tail, just above his fluke, not unlike a puncture mark.

Yuuri felt his stomach churn unpleasantly. Beyond the fact that he hated that Viktor had been hurt, he couldn't fathom why if marine biologists had tagged Viktor...why hadn't he heard about it? Certainly if a live merman had been caught, it would have been headline news.

Yuuri chewed on his bottom lip, lost in thought, his confusion over why he had never heard a story of a _real, live merman_ being captured being pushed aside as he focused solely on his concern for Viktor. He didn't want to pressure the merman into discussing it if he didn't want to, but at the same time, his curiosity was gnawing at Yuuri relentlessly. He wanted—no—he _needed_ to know.

“Um, Viktor?” Yuuri prompted hesitantly, and when he looked back up, he saw the merman eyeing him with a guarded expression. “I don't mean to pry, but...that...that mark near your fins...”

He trailed off, not quite able to form the question.

Viktor's brow pinched, and he glared at the ground.

“Yakov, our old leader, was very upset,” Viktor said, his voice distant. Yuuri reached out for Viktor's hand tentatively, and the merman gripped it like a lifeline. “Yuri was still a pup, orphaned, and his grandfather had recently been caught and killed by whalers. He watched helplessly as Yakov and Lilia got the thing off me. It really scared him, and he's been especially wary of humans ever since. Except Otabek, which was a huge surprise to all of us, and Otabek's family was particularly cruel to him after his transformation. Yuri has seen humans do a lot of hateful things in his lifetime; it is not so shocking that he would reject the idea of your family accepting you.”

“It makes more sense now that I know all of that,” Yuuri said as he offered Viktor's hand a small squeeze. “I'll try not to say anything to him; I have a feeling he might not want to talk about it.”

Viktor laughed, though the sound was weak. They both knew that that was likely a _massive_ understatement.

 

~*~

 

After the research vessels left, Yuuri and Viktor tentatively exited the cave, and swam as far inland as they could, without running the risk of beaching themselves.

Unfortunately, no one else was out on the water so late. With his shoulders sagging in defeat, Yuuri surfaced and headed back towards the cavern near the shore.

“We'll look again tomorrow,” Viktor offered in a falsely bright, optimistic tone of voice. “She'll be back, I know that she will.”

Yuuri sighed, and pulled himself into a sitting position on the submarine ledge, the water coming up to his mid-chest, and he bowed his head a little. Even though he knew that Viktor was probably right, and his mother would return at dawn, he still could not shake the hopelessness that had settled around his heart. It felt like he would never see his family again.

Lips brushed Yuuri's forehead, and he glanced up, spotting Viktor's closeness. He flushed, and pulled away quickly.

“I'm sorry,” Viktor said softly, “was that...wrong?”

“I...don't know,” Yuuri replied, his lips twisted into a grimace as he tried to figure out exactly what he was feeling. “I'm still hurt by what you did, Viktor, but I don't want to hold what happened against you, and not get over it. It's so frustrating, and confusing.”

“How can I make it better?” Viktor asked, frowning a little. “I won't push, I swear, but I want to help.”

“I don't know,” Yuuri repeated, sighing a little. He reached for Viktor's hand again, and they laced their fingers together. That felt good to Yuuri, so why had the kiss felt almost _wrong?_ He hadn't minded their kisses before at all, so why was it bothering him now? He didn't understand it.

“We'll take things slow, Yuuri,” Viktor offered as he gave Yuuri's hand a small squeeze. “There is no need to rush into any kind of relationship here. How about we go onto the reef, and I can help you practice you echolocation? There won't be much else to do for the next few hours, unless you'd rather sleep.”

“I don't think I _could_ sleep,” Yuuri admitted with a weak laugh. “Too much has happened. But working on my echolocation sounds okay.”

 

~*~

 

Yuuri quickly learnt that comparatively, Viktor was a _much_ better teacher than Yuri.

Or, at the very least, he didn't yell quite as much as Yuri did.

Viktor explained to him where the noises came from (an organ around his forehead and nasal passage, not unlike melons in cetaceans, though he already knew that), and methods to make the sound.

Yuri had been adamant that it was an intrinsic sense, one which Yuuri could call upon without being taught. Yuuri had only managed weaker iterations of the sound after what felt like ages of being yelled at, while Viktor, sensing that he had not quite grasped it, offered him explanations using patient words.

“It's a slight separation of the jaw, like when your body wants to yawn,” Viktor explained a few minutes into their practice. “You don't need to force it, or do it to an extent where it hurts. The sound will escape you naturally, but if you are using the wrong area of the body, the sound will not resonate. It's not coming from your voice, it's coming from your other senses.”

Yuuri understood this. He knew anatomy and biology. This was something so simple, and he quietly fumed at Yuri for making it sound so complicated and nigh-painful.

“I'll try again,” Yuuri reassured Viktor, and his companion smiled at him brightly.

“You can do it, Yuuri, I believe in you.”

Yuuri dipped underwater, rotating his shoulders as he inhaled, pushing the water past his gills, though as always, it was not nearly as calming as a normal breath would have been.

Viktor had tossed down a conch shell earlier, and promised that it would be in an easy to locate spot. However, the coral reef, while not exactly vast, was still big enough that finding one shell within its confines felt like a daunting task.

Yuuri flicked his tail, diving deeper. The reef was dark, but not black, thanks in part to the fingernail of moon in the sky. Yuuri could see the outline of the reef, and the occasional speck of a fish dart by, but nothing clear. It felt like a safe space to practice his echolocation, away from the dangers of deeper, more open water.

Yuuri breathed through his gills again, and shut his eyes for a moment, collecting himself, before he snapped his eyes open again, and moved his jaw like Viktor had instructed.

The result was jarring. A click sound escaped him, though the sensation was not unlike huffing a breath through one's nose. In the same instant, an odd, negative picture formed in his mind, the colours all wrong.

Yuuri tried again. Two clicks slipped out, and the image in his mind of the reef was different—more detailed. There was more colour, but it was stunted somehow, as though some pigments were missing.

Yuuri did it again and again, sweeping over the reef slowly, recalling only belatedly that he had an objective, and needed to find the conch shell that Viktor had hidden for him, but the images popping into his head made it harder to concentrate than he'd anticipated. It was almost like being under a strobe light, and watching the staccato movements of the dancers around him. It wasn't as easy as he'd expected—instead, it was deeply disorienting.

Yuuri surfaced after a few minutes, the conch still lost, and his head was beginning to ache. He groaned, rubbing his temples, just as a pair of familiar arms hooked around him from behind.

“You did it,” Viktor said, and Yuuri could hear the smile in his voice.

“But I didn't find the shell,” Yuuri protested, making his companion laugh warmly.

“It doesn't matter, you still echolocated. How do you feel?”

“A bit hungover?”

“What's...hungover?”

Yuuri laughed, and turned in Viktor's arms, smiling again when he spotted the sweetly perplexed look on his face, paired with pride over Yuuri's accomplishment.

“It's...on land, we do this thing to food, and it makes something you drink. It sort of...plays with your mind, but if you have too much of it, you wake up the next morning not feeling very well...I just mean my head hurts, and I'm a bit dizzy.”

Viktor chuckled as he shook his head in disbelief, as though he could not understand why humans would do such a thing to themselves. He ran his hands consolingly up and down Yuuri's upper arms, his laughter softening to a warm smile.

“But you did it,” Viktor said at last, smiling at him proudly. “You echolocated. I heard you.”

“Yeah...I did, didn't I?” Yuuri asked, his demeanour brightening a little, and Viktor laughed again. “Can I try again?”

“Give yourself a minute,” Viktor advised, “then try it again. I know you can do it, but I don't want you to make yourself too dizzy.”

“All right,” Yuuri agreed, and he smiled a little. He liked how Viktor did not speak down to him, but encouraged him. In all that, still seemed to care about his well-being. It was so many things, and it encouraged Yuuri, making him feel like they could _do_ this—get past Viktor's terrible decision of abandoning Yuuri when he needed him most, learn his echolocation, and have everything be okay.

The only question now was whether he'd still feel the same way after he saw his family.

 

~*~

 

Yuuri used the excuse of practising his echolocation to avoid sleep. He knew that he would only stay up and worry about what might happen when his mother saw him, and the practice took all of his focus, exhausting him to the point where Viktor had to carry him back to the cave at daybreak.

“I couldn't...find...the shell...” Yuuri mumbled sleepily, his arms draped loosely over Viktor's shoulders as he swam them both back to the cave, and he chuckled warmly at Yuuri's words.

“You did really well, Yuuri,” Viktor replied, soft fondness in his voice. “It doesn't matter that you couldn't find the shell, you still did a great job.”

Yuuri smiled sleepily, resting his head against Viktor's shoulder as sleep took hold, well before they even made it back to the cave.

 

“ _Yuuri_.”

The voice was soft, barely a whisper. Yuuri groaned as his upper body was jostled gently; someone was shaking him lightly to try and wake him up.

“ _Yuuri_ ,” the voice said again, a little louder, and a little more insistent this time.

Yuuri groaned, and cracked one eye open.

“ _Whattimeisit?_ ” he slurred, and Viktor smiled, a hand carding pleasantly through his damp hair.

“About midday,” he replied. “I hunted while you slept, and brought you some food. There's people on the beach, but I don't know if they're your family or not.”

Yuuri sat up, caught somewhere between a heavy grogginess, and the knee-jerk desire to rush out and see if the people were indeed his family or not.

“I feel heavy,” Yuuri complained, the tide rushing over his tail pleasantly, but it did little to rouse him. In response, Viktor placed a thin stone across his lap, like a plate, leaden with all manner of seafood—abalone, scallops, oysters, and even some baby clams.

The shells had already been split and the meat separated from their connective tissue, roe sacs and other inedible parts tossed back to sea for the fish to eat. Yuuri's mouth watered at the sight. He only just realized how hungry he really was, and he dug into the sweet, fresh-tasting meat, it intermingling with a wash of salty seawater on his tongue with every bite. For a moment, he forgot all of his woes, and focused only on the feast in front of him.

It was only when Yuuri had cleaned his plate and tossed the shells back into the water did he realize that Viktor was not eating as well, and he blinked at him.

“Did you eat?” Yuuri asked, licking his lips, and Viktor laughed as he nodded.

“I caught a few fish for myself,” he explained, and pointed to a few fish bones cast to one side of the cavern, where a seabird was picking at them. There wasn't enough left to tell what they were, but Yuuri assumed that they were some sort of small reef fish. “You were still fast asleep when I got back, so I ate while I waited for you to wake up.”

“But you woke me up anyway,” Yuuri teased, and Viktor smiled a little.

“Only because there were people nearby,” Viktor reminded him, “I didn't want you to miss them, especially if they turned out to be your family.”

“Right, the people,” Yuuri said, echoing the words almost robotically, and Viktor nodded his head.

“Are you ready to do this?” Viktor asked, “it might not be them, I don't know, but if you don't think you're ready, we can always wait.”

Yuuri didn't know if he was ready. The prospect of Yuri's dire warnings made Yuuri even more nervous, and he didn't know what would happen if his family rejected him.

Yuuri slipped deeper into the water. Viktor watched him, but did not move. He gave him space, didn't crowd him, but somehow managed to offer his support in the same breath. Yuuri felt stronger with Viktor at his back.

Yuuri stopped at the cave mouth, and dipped down until only the top of his head was visible, like a crocodile. His eyes focused on the humans. Four of them in wetsuits.

Yuuko, his mother, father, and sister were all out there, diving in and out of the water like sea lions, and calling out their findings to the others. His father, who had never been a great freediver, was handing out flyers to the occasional beachgoer or fisherman, and seemed to be speaking to them enthusiastically, his arms waving, and his eyes wide.

Wide with worry.

Suddenly, Yuuri's fear was replaced with guilt for not having sought them out sooner.

Yuuri lifted his head, straightening his back a little.

“It's them,” he confirmed. “My mom, dad, sister, and my best friend, Yuuko.”

“What do you want to do, Yuuri?”

Yuuri did not answer verbally. Instead, he offered Viktor a small, reassuring smile, and with his heart in his throat, he swam out of the cave, and towards the shore.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: A lot of the sensations of echolocation in this chapter was made up and is not factual, and is very loosely based on stories I have read in the past of people with sight impairments learning to 'see' by using sound, albeit with a more fantastical twist to it. The Japan Coral Research Unit is also completely made up.


	10. A Mother's Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Next update will be April 7th. Enjoy! :)
> 
> **NOTE: Due to 8 of my stories being plagiarized in the span of a week, as of now all my works are being restricted to Registered AO3 users only, in order to minimize this happening again. I'm sorry for any inconvenience that this causes.**

Chapter Ten – A Mother's Love

 

Yuuri flicked his tail, slipping from the craggy rocks of the cave. He shuffled carefully along the shallows that connected the cave to the ocean, before he finally delved into deeper water.

He slipped beneath the waves, choosing to circle around the reef, rather than go in a straight line. In the process, he ended up swimming farther from shore, and not closer to it.

Yuuri hyperventilated, fear and uncertainty beginning to eclipse his excitement, the water pushing through his gills quickly, and expanding them almost to the point of pain. He was drawn out of his frightened daze only when an indignant triggerfish fish abruptly darted at him, and Yuuri knocked the bad-tempered creature away as gently as he could with his tail while he swam out of the fish's established territory, still shaking his head in an effort to clear it.

Distantly, Yuuri could see his family diving in and out of the water, combing the reef with pinched, worried looks on their faces. Even at a distance Yuuri saw their expressions fairly clearly, and he could not recall ever seeing his mother, sister, or Yuuko ever look so serious while in the water.

_They're looking for my corpse,_ Yuuri realized with a sudden jolt, and he felt his guilt spike. For a moment, he was tempted to turn back, hide with Viktor until they left, but he couldn't do it—he couldn't make his family's worries any worse than they already were.

Yuuri ducked down deeper, hugging close to the reef bed. It was a clear, sunny day, especially for so late in the season, and the visibility was high. He swam with a pod of bottlenose dolphins to hide his presence before he broke away and slipped into an ancient, coral-studded shipwreck while he tried to decide how to approach his family.

Though it wasn't the same wreck that Viktor had hidden in when they first met, the parallel still was enough to make Yuuri smile faintly, his eyes on the shore as his family charged into the water for another dive.

Yuuri watched, his bottom lip caught between his teeth. The water caved inwards near the beach, the silver-white of bubbles momentarily mixing with the blue of the sea, pairs of feet crashing through the surf, before three bodies in black wetsuits submerged themselves.

At a distance, Yuuri couldn't help but notice how much they looked like seals. Had he not known better, he may have mistaken them for the real thing. Yuuri shook his head a little, refocusing his attention on the matter at hand, before he realized with a jolt that one of the divers was rather close to his hiding place, and even at a distance, he could see who it was—his mother.

In fact, she was swimming directly for him.

Yuuri ducked down deeper into the wreck, his head spinning with panic, momentarily overwhelmed by memories of Viktor's words and Yuri's dire warnings.

 

_What if his mother rejected him?_

_What if his mother was upset?_

_What if his mother hated him?_

 

_No,_ Yuuri thought, shaking his head. _You remember how she used to talk about her experiences in Crete. And she's my mother—she could never hate me._

Bolstered somewhat by his own reassurances, Yuuri watched his mother swim in close, here eyes narrowed into a squint behind her boxy goggles. Yuuri shifted in the wreck, hiding his tail from view, but in the process he kicked up sand and detritus, honing his mother in on his hiding spot immediately.

As Yuuri had expected, his mother made a beeline straight for him.

She hovered over the wreck, her legs kicking a little as she strove to stay in place, and Yuuri looked up at her through the rusted hole in the hull. He saw his mother freeze, a stream of bubbles slipping past her lips, and Yuuri watched as her swim goggles immediately fogged up, and she began to weep.

She swam down closer to him, and reached into the wreck for him, taking his hands and tugging him in the direction of the beach.

Yuuri smiled at her sadly, and lifted his tail, twisting it a little to show it wasn't some sort of costume, and turned his head to show her his gills.

His mother smiled at him sadly, coaxing him out of the wreck, but no longer specifically for the direction of the shore. Yuuri followed her lead, uncertain what his mother wanted, but he trusted her nonetheless.

The moment he was out of the confines of the ship, his mother pulled him into a bone-crushing hug.

Yuuri hugged her back with equal enthusiasm, his tears dissolving into the water around him. He could feel his mother tensing up, likely from a combination of strong emotions and lack of oxygen, and he held tight to her as he swam from the wreck, and back towards the cave as fast as he could, mindless to the worry that the rest of his family might catch sight of him.

Yuuri surfaced as soon as he was out of sight of the others, allowing his mother to gasp for breath as he guided her into the cave. Viktor was still there, his eyes wide with shock over the fact that Yuuri had brought his mother with him, but Yuuri paid the other merman no mind, his focus entirely fixed upon his mother.

“Oh, _Yuuri_ ,” his mother cried out tearfully, hugging him tightly again, the edge of her goggles knocking his cheek painfully, though he ignored it as he hugged his mother back.

“ _Okaasan,_ I'm so sorry,” Yuuri replied, his voice tight, but she laughed weakly, as though she thought Yuuri's apologies were unnecessary. When she pulled back, she lifted up her goggles, and smiled at him warmly.

“Oh, no, _Yuuri-kun_ , you don't need to apologize,” she said as she pulled him in for yet another hug. “Have you done anything wrong?” Yuuri opened his mouth to answer her, but his mother continued on before he could reply. “Of _course_ you haven't. Goodness, I used to call you my little _ningyo_ when you were young, but I didn't think you were this serious about it!”

Yuuri laughed weakly while his mother continued to smile at him, as though nothing had changed. Her eyes were still teary, but she did not appear upset with him—mostly, she looked relieved.

“Tell me what happened, Yuuri-kun,” she said, her voice warm and accepting, as though there was no fish tail where his legs used to be.

Without a moment's hesitation, Yuuri told her the whole story.

This time, he left nothing out. He told her of those first tentative interactions with Viktor, of Viktor's accidental tearing of his larynx, of Yuuri's belief that Viktor hated him, their reunion, _the kiss_ , and his time with the other merpeople, including Yuri's reluctance to allow Yuuri to seek his family out again.

“...I wanted to see you, Okaasan, I did,” Yuuri said emphatically as he took her hands in his own, “but they were scared _for_ me. They feared you might react badly to what happened, and they didn't want me to be hurt. They didn't understand our connection with the ocean. But Viktor understood, and he helped me gather the courage to come here today to find you, and Onee-chan, and Yu-chan, and Otousan. It's thanks to him that I'm here at _all_.”

Yuuri fell silent, and watched his mother apprehensively. His throat hurt from so much talking, but far from looking disappointed in him, his mother looked proud. She was smiling the same smile that Yuuri had seen countless times before—when he'd shown his mother his first catch of baby clams with Yuuko at age seven, when he'd successfully dived over a hundred feet down, and when he'd graduated from university.

It was that, more than anything else, that proved to Yuuri that his mother still loved him with all her heart.

“I'm glad that you're here, and you're safe, Yuuri-kun,” his mother said warmly as she took his hands. “I know it must feel like you have lost your family because of what has happened, but you haven't. Our family has always been one with the sea, Yuuri. It does not matter to me if you have fins or feet, Yuuri-kun. You are still my son, and I still _love_ you.”

Yuuri felt his throat tighten as he gazed at his mother. Not until this moment had he realized how badly he needed to hear those exact words.

_I still love you._

His mother still loved him.

She never stopped.

“Okaasan...” Yuuri said tearfully, his voice breaking before he could continue, and his mother drew him into another bone-crushing hug.

They stayed like that for what felt like an age, Yuuri crying, and his mother holding him, rocking him like she used to when he was little. Viktor said nothing, sitting back and watching, with no hint of impatience in his expression. He seemed to know that Yuuri needed this—he needed more than just his new merpeople family.

He needed his human family, too.

“Oh, Yuuri,” his mother said at last as she pulled back, wiping her eyes a little. “We should go and get your Otousan, Oneesan, and Yu-chan. Do you think it would be too much to see them all at once?”

Yuuri appreciated her tact, and in truth, he had no idea if he was prepared to see them all at once. By the same token however, it seemed a little too suspect to ask his mother to fetch them one by one. Certainly they'd notice, and all come rushing in anyway?

“No, you can bring them all,” Yuuri replied as he reached for Viktor's hand, and the other merman squeezed the limb in silent reassurance. “As long as Viktor can stay?”

“Oh, of course!” his mother said, her eyes brightening a little as she turned to Viktor and took his free hand, shaking it with so much enthusiasm that Viktor's eyes went a little wide. “I'm sorry, Viktor, I should have said hello, but I was so excited to see Yuuri. My name is Katsuki Hiroko, but you may call me Hiroko if you like.”

She bowed, and Viktor glanced to Yuuri as though he had no idea how to react. Yuuri giggled, and squeezed his hand again.

“Erm...thank you, Hi-Hiroko,” Viktor replied awkwardly. “I care about Yuuri very much, and...well...I did not wish for him to lose his family.”

“That much is obvious, if you don't mind me saying,” Hiroko replied, her eyes twinkling in silent mirth. “When you two kissed, Yuuri changed. That is true love, Viktor.”

“How do you know that?” Viktor asked, but his mother merely smiled enigmatically.

“Stay here,” she told both of them. “I will come back with our family.”

His mother turned and rushed off, splashing through the two-foot deep water loudly before she made it to the deeper water, and she swam off without looking back.

Yuuri let out a little sigh as he leant against Viktor's side, silently seeking comfort. Viktor wrapped an arm around his waist, and drew him closer.

“How are you feeling?” Viktor asked while he pressed a light kiss to Yuuri's temple, and Yuuri laughed weakly.

“Like I swam from here to South America and back, the long way, without stopping,” Yuuri replied, and Viktor chuckled a little.

“But you did it, you saw your mother,” Viktor offered, while he gave Yuuri's waist a gentle, reassuring squeeze. “She still wants to be in your life.”

“Yeah, it a huge relief,” Yuuri said, “but what about the rest of my family?”

“I am certain that they will be just as loving and welcoming, Yuuri,” Viktor replied with absolute confidence. “You have a good family, they will accept you—I just know it.”

“Yeah,” Yuuri agreed, smiling a little, “I hope so.”

 

Yuuri and Viktor sat huddled together, hands and arms intertwined as they listened to the distant sound of the waves hitting the shore, and the murmur of voices. Yuuri thought it was his family talking, but they were too far away for him to clearly hear what they were saying.

Yuuri shifted his gaze to Viktor, and his heart seemed to swell with affection. Not just for supporting his decision to _come out_ , so to speak, to his family, but also his attitude during the first exchange. He had not tried to rush Yuuri along or demand attention when he and his mother had momentarily forgotten that he was present—Viktor merely sat back and let Yuuri have his moment.

Yuuri could not find words for how grateful he was for that.

“Viktor?” Yuuri said, his voice small, and the other merman shifted his gaze from the cave mouth to meet Yuuri's eyes.

“Yes?”

“I—thank you,” Yuuri said, arching up a little to press his lips to Viktor's in a hasty kiss. “Thank you for everything.”

Viktor smiled warmly, and moved in to kiss Yuuri in response. It was more slow, more languid, and made Yuuri shiver with longing.

“Anything for you, Yuuri.”

They pulled apart just as Hiroko returned, leading Yuuri's father, sister, and Yuuko into the cave. The three of them had mixed looks of hope, disbelief, and apprehension on their faces, making Yuuri suspect that his mother may have blurted out everything, and had not just led them with a vague _come and see_ sort of statement.

Mari's face softened when she spotted Yuuri. It lost its usual hard edge, and she brought her hands up to her mouth as her eyes flooded with tears of joy. Similarly, his father's glasses were foggy, and tears were openly streaming down his cheeks.

“Oh, Yuuri, you're safe...” his sister said.

“Yuuri, thank goodness...” his father said.

Yuuri smiled at them both shyly, his expression apologetic as he sat there.

However, when he shifted his gaze to Yuuko, he started a little at what he saw in her expression.

Fear.

Yuuko's eyes were wide. Well beyond disbelief, she looked genuinely terrified at the sight of Yuuri and Viktor sitting there.

She took a minor step back, and Yuuri swallowed nervously.

“Y-Yu-chan?” he prompted, and to his horror, he watched as she turned and hurried from the cave without a word, moving as fast as her legs would carry her.

 


	11. Family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Next update is scheduled for April 21st. Enjoy! :)

Chapter Eleven – Family

 

“ _Yuuko!_ ” Yuuri cried, but his desperate call did not cause his friend to turn back.

Yuuri buried his face in his hands, and Viktor touched his back softly, uncertainly, as though he didn't know whether Yuuri wanted such consolation at the moment.

“Stay here, Yuuri-kun,” his mother instructed sternly, and Yuuri glanced up to see that his mother was looking uncharacteristically serious. “I will go make sure she is all right. Please don't leave until I come back, okay?”

Yuuri nodded, not quite certain what else to do, and Hiroko smiled warmly, reaching out to lightly touch his cheek before she turned and hastened into the deeper water before she dove and disappeared.

 

Yuuri's gaze shifted to his father and sister, and found himself at a loss for what to say. What _could_ he say in this sort of situation? _Sorry I disappeared without a trace? Sorry I accidentally got turned into a sea creature? Sorry I disappeared_ and _got turned into a sea creature?_

“Well, Yuuri, good thing your tail matches your hair,” Mari said at last, her mouth twitching into something that was almost a smirk, and Yuuri laughed weakly. “Imagine if your tail was based on your favourite colour? A purple tail and black hair...you'd be an Emo Kid _forever_.”

“What's an Emo Kid?” Viktor asked, cocking his head to the side curiously, and Mari snorted.

“I'll explain later,” Yuuri said quickly, flushing a deep crimson as Mari continued to laugh, while Viktor merely appeared perplexed. “Erm, Otousan, Mari, this is Viktor. Viktor, this is my dad, Toshiya, and my sister, Mari.”

“Hello,” Viktor said politely, and he offered Mari and his father each a shy little smile, far away from his usual self, though Yuuri wasn't sure whether Viktor was just trying to be polite, or nervous about being close to so many humans.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Toshiya replied cheerfully, offering Viktor a respectful bow, “any friend of Yuuri's is a friend of ours.”

“Bit more than friends, Otousan...” Mari muttered, rolling her eyes, but Toshiya did not seem to hear her. However, Yuuri noted that this was probably because his father was always so enthusiastic about meeting Yuuri's friends that he sometimes missed certain social cues, not because he was trying to be deliberately dense.

“Viktor felt really bad when it all happened,” Yuuri offered, pointedly taking Viktor's hand, and his father's smile seemed to broaden a little, like he was happy for his son. “He never wanted me to be taken away from my family.”

“Ah, but Yuuri, you're still here,” his father said, waggling his finger teasingly, like he used to do when Yuuri had tried (and failed) to rebel as a teen, and his father discovered a glaring flaw in his stupid plan. “You can't get away from us so easily, son.”

Yuuri didn't quite know what to say in response, but he was saved from answering by his mother, who had at last returned to the cavern, though she was looking particularly sombre.

“Okaasan?” Yuuri prompted hesitantly, “erm...where's Yuuko?”

“Will you come with me Yuuri-kun?” she asked without answering his question. “The beach is empty, there is no one to see you.”

“O-Okay,” he replied, and turned to look at Viktor. “Will you be okay for a few minutes?”

“Yes, I'll be fine, Yuuri,” Viktor replied with a soft, sweet smile, and in full view of his family, pecked Yuuri's lips in a light kiss, making him flush a deep scarlet while his sister snickered. “Go on.”

Yuuri slipped down from the ledge upon which he had been sitting, and headed out of the cavern as he followed his mother into deeper water.

They swam together for a few minutes in silence, until they reached a partially submerged tide pool. Yuuri curled his tail into it, while his mother sat on the edge, her eyes fixed on the street beyond the beach, watching for humans.

“Where's Yuuko?” Yuuri repeated, his tone dull as he picked at a dead scale upon his tail. “What happened?”

“Oh, Yuuri-kun, I'm so sorry about that,” Hiroko said, and Yuuri glanced up, catching the look of genuine guilt in his mother's eyes. “Can you forgive your Okaasan for being forgetful? In all the excitement, I forgot something very important.”

Yuuri blinked as he stared at his mother. What was she talking about? What had she forgotten? What did it have to do with Yuuko?

Before he could ask any of his questions, his mother elaborated.

“Yuuri, Yuuko's family is very superstitious, do you know that?”

Yuuri nodded; he did know that. Yuuko had grown up on fishing boats and married a fisherman—she never brought bananas onto ships, for example, and she would get doubly nervous if she spotted an overlarge catfish at the market, as though she feared what sort of retribution might occur from the fisherman trying to sell the creature.

She never brought it up very much as they got older, but Yuuri could see it on her face all the same. She had always wanted to be seen as a normal _rational_ adult, not a superstitious mariner.

“That's why she ran?” Yuuri asked hollowly, and his mother nodded.

“She's afraid _for_ you, and she is afraid of the situation—not afraid _of_ you,” his mother explained patiently. “She wouldn't listen to me—she thought that you did this on purpose, doing something questionable or dangerous that might bring an earthquake or tsunami.”

“How could Yuuko _think_ that I wanted this?” Yuuri asked incredulously, “or that something like that is even _possible_?”

Yuuri stopped himself short, and bit his lip.

Viktor could control the weather; he'd almost forgotten. Did that mean that there was a kernel of truth to Yuuko's fears?

“Nothing is impossible, Yuuri-kun,” his mother said, reaching out to touch his arm affectionately as she spoke. “But _I_ know that you did not attempt this on your own, and that it was an accident. In time, I am sure that Yuuko will come around. Just wait and see.”

 

Yuuri nodded, though he did not feel that there was much reason to hope. Yuuko could be _so stubborn_ about some things.

Yuuri and his mother sat together for several long minutes, not speaking. Hiroko's eyes were trained upon the overhead clouds, and Yuuri's gaze was fixed on the ebb and flow of the sea.

As they sat there, Yuuri could not quite decide what he was feeling. It wasn't quite betrayal, and closer to something like annoyance— _surely_ Yuuko would know that Yuuri wouldn't _choose_ this, right?

But then, he also knew that fear wasn't entirely a rational thing. Because of that, his anger at Yuuko was minimal, though this knowledge did not quell the sting nearly as much as Yuuri had hoped that it would.

“We should head back for the cave,” his mother said suddenly. “I think I hear people coming.”

Yuuri nodded mutely, and slid from the pool, across the sand, and back into the shallows. His mother followed him, silent and contemplative as they dipped below the surface, and swam back to the cave.

 

When they reached the cave, Yuuri was relieved to find that his father and sister were chatting amicably with Viktor, rather than the three of them sitting in awkward silence.

Instead, they seemed to be almost teasing Viktor, at the moment on the subject of food.

“Can you eat human food?” his father asked, and Viktor blinked politely, but smiled when he spotted Yuuri and his mother heading back into the cave.

“What do you mean by human food?” Viktor asked, while Yuuri moved up next to him and took his hand, offering the limb a small reassuring squeeze.

“Like...cake, or something,” his sister explained with a vague shrug, but this seemed to make Viktor's confusion worsen.

“What's...cake?”

“ _Okaasan! Otousan!_ ” Mari cried suddenly with a sharp shout of incredulity at Viktor's words, making everyone jump slightly. “ _We need to have a Yuuri is a Merman party in this cave! Viktor has to try cake!_ ”

Yuuri burst out laughing, his hands coming up to his face as he positively _howled_ with laughter, tears coming to his eyes, part relief, part mirth.

“Yuuri, it's not _that_ funny,” Mari complained sourly, crossing her arms, which only aided in her parents joining in, and the vocalizations of joy echoed from every direction, and surrounded Yuuri with warmth.

 

~*~

 

Yuuri's family stayed for several hours, chatting with one another, catching up, and getting to know Viktor. The anguish of Yuuko's betrayal was not forgotten, but Yuuri found he could not think on it for long without fearing he might break down, and chose instead to focus on the joy he felt at having his family back.

They all took turns hunting for things to eat, and Hiroko seemed happy to shuck clams, oysters, and other shellfish with the small knife she often carried, and shared them with the family. They also also carefully transported their food bag from the beach, which contained ichigo daifuku, strawberry pocky, and green tea.

“We've needed the sweets to keep our spirits up while we looked for you,” Hiroko explained, her voice almost sheepish, and Yuuri smiled at her sadly as he bit into one of the mochi-covered strawberries, savouring a flavour he thought he'd never taste again. Seafood was all well and good, but he'd missed some of the comforts of human life.

“I understand, Okaasan, you don't need to apologize,” Yuuri said as he accepted a cup of tea from her, while Viktor was still staring at his own cup dubiously, as though he didn't know what to do with it.

“You blow on it like this,” Yuuri explained, doing his best to keep from laughing—Viktor was such a strong, handsome man, but he still somehow managed to look _adorable_ when confronted by something as strange as a cup of tea.

Yuuri blew on his tea, and sipped it, nearly moaning aloud at the taste of it. Viktor mimicked him, blowing too hard and splattering Yuuri with flecks of the drink, but Yuuri didn't mind, and smiled as he watched Viktor cautiously try and sip the drink.

“It's warm!” he exclaimed, his eyes widening with surprise.

“It's tea, silly, of course it's warm,” Hiroko said with a chuckle, and Viktor sipped the drink again, his expression thoughtful, as though he couldn't decide whether he liked the taste or not. Despite Hiroko's laughter however, Yuuri beamed at how warm and welcoming his mother sounded, as though she'd already fully accepted Viktor as part of her family.

 

They ate through the sweets (the healthier snacks in the bag forgotten) and continued to chat, until Hiroko reluctantly admitted that they'd best be getting home.

“You be good to yourself, Yuuri-kun,” she said as she drew him into a tight hug, “and I'll talk to Yuuko for you, I promise.”

“I wish I could come with you,” Yuuri said with a small sigh as he hugged her back. “Yuuko's my best friend, I wish she could look past her fears and see that I didn't do this on purpose.”

“Maybe I could fill a wheel-barrow with seawater,” Hiroko joked, and Yuuri laughed weakly. “Don't worry, Yuuri, it'll work out, just you wait and see.”

Yuuri had a hard time believing her, and clung to his mother, quiet, before he moved to hug his sister and father in turn, both of them teary-eyed at the prospect of saying goodbye for the night.

“Oh, wait!” his father cried, and all heads swivelled to him in alarm. “We need to set a time to see you next, Yuuri! I guess you don't have clocks in the ocean, right?”

“Oh, right,” Yuuri replied, forcing out a laugh. Part of him was almost surprised that they planned to come back, and in the same breath, he wanted to kick himself for worrying that his family might not return to see him.

“How about...day after tomorrow, around noon?” his father asked kindly, “we'll find someplace secluded, with lots of tide pools, and we can have a picnic with you and all your...mer-friends? We'll bring extra blankets to hide your tails, so that any curious people don't make a big fuss.”

Yuuri smiled, markedly pleased that his father correctly assumed that Viktor was not the only one of their little group.

“I'll see who wants to come,” Yuuri promised, “not everyone is comfortable...erm...being that close to shore.”

His father nodded, exchanging a knowing look with his mother, as though he knew what Yuuri _really_ meant, before he turned back to Yuuri and clapped him on the shoulder affectionately.

“Be good to yourself, son. All your mer-friends are family. Fins or feet, it does not matter to us.”

 

~*~

 

The goodbye was long, but Yuuri didn't mind. Bidding his family farewell, even temporarily, was hard, but the knowledge that he'd be seeing them again soon made it a little bit easier.

Viktor sidled into deeper water behind Yuuri, and wrapped his arms around Yuuri's waist, hugging him close while they watched the humans swim for shore. He didn't speak, but rested his head on Yuuri's shoulder in silent support.

“Your family is nice,” he finally said, his breath tickling the side of Yuuri's neck as he spoke. “How are you feeling?”

“I don't know,” Yuuri admitted, sighing a little as he leant back against Viktor, his tail curling back around his companion's tail, and he felt Viktor tense, as though he was surprised by the touch. “Seeing my family was _wonderful_ , but I keep worrying about Yuuko. What if she doesn't talk to me ever again?”

“She will,” Viktor reassured him, and pressed a kiss to his shoulder. “You're hard to stay away from, Yuuri. I don't know what she did, or believes, but I know that she will come around in time.”

Yuuri laughed warmly, smiling as he turned around in Viktor's embrace to press a kiss to his lips.

“I promise to tell you everything that happened, you know, when my _okaasan_ pulled me aside, but right now...I just need to breathe first. Is that okay?”

“Anything you need, Yuuri,” Viktor replied, his voice soft and almost reverent, and moved in to peck Yuuri's lips so softly and tenderly, it did little but make Yuuri ache for more.

 

“Do you think...um...before we go back to the cave...”

Yuuri trailed off, scarlet blooming on his cheeks, and Viktor arched a brow when Yuuri did not pick up his sentence again.

“Before we go back to the cave...?” Viktor prompted at last, and Yuuri laughed weakly in embarrassment.

“Just...remember that little cavern you took me to...when you accidentally hurt my voice?” Yuuri hedged, and a flicker of guilt crossed the other merman's features as he nodded a little in confirmation. “Well, I was just wondering if we could go there tonight, just for a little while? I'd like to be alone with you.”

Immediately, Yuuri felt himself turn, if possible, even redder as he realized how his words could be interpreted, even as Viktor continued to gaze at him bemusedly.

“Not for...you know... _stuff_ , but...just...to be alone...?” Yuuri explained in a rush, and Viktor's confusion seemed to deepen.

“Stuff?” he asked curiously, “what do you mean?”

_Oh, good, we're not there yet,_ Yuuri thought as he relaxed a little. He didn't quite want to have _that_ discussion yet, asking how gay sex worked with marine creatures was _definitely_ a conversation for another day.

“Never mind,” he said quickly. “I just want to be alone with you for a while.”

“I like that idea,” Viktor replied, his voice on the cusp of sultry as he leant in to ghost another kiss across Yuuri's lips. “Come on, let's go.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: The reference to bananas on boats (the superstition varies slightly if it's a shipping boat or fishing boat) is an old superstition that has like a zillion possible origins, from them spoiling all other vegetables on the ship to them hiding spiders and snakes in their bunches, to many others, so no one really knows what the “real” origin for that is. Sometimes the superstition also extends to “fruit of the loom” undergarments, Banana Republic clothes, or even images of bananas on clothing or other items.  
> The catfish is a reference to Namazu, or Onamazu, a giant catfish from Japanese mythology who is believed to cause earthquakes, and, by extension, tsunamis. I had a bit of trouble finding stuff on Japanese folklore/Japanese Mariner Superstition that wasn't just general information or westerner superstitions, so the context may not work for some of you, but I did do my best :3


	12. Fear and Trust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hey guys, next update is scheduled for...ye gods, May 5th. The next time I update this, I will be 30 ;_; (My birthday is May 3rd, lmao) Happy Easter, everyone!
> 
> **Content Warning: Past/Referenced Violence (non-descriptive)**

Chapter Twelve – Fear and Trust

 

The little submarine cavern was just as Yuuri remembered it.

Given that he'd blacked out on the way down initially, this time he was able to appreciate the trip much more comfortably. His hand was clasped with Viktor's as they meandered down towards the cavern at a leisurely pace, in no rush to get there.

They passed through a large, gaping opening, which Yuuri could only see with his echolocation, given that it was too dark to see much with just his eyes.

The tunnel to this cave was shorter than Yuuri remembered, but it was wide enough that Yuuri and Viktor could swim side-by-side without crowding each other. Viktor's hand felt warm in Yuuri's, and he brimmed with joy as he tensed his hand in Viktor's, and he returned the gesture at once.

 

“Why did you want to be alone?” Viktor asked when they surfaced, and Yuuri blinked at him.

“Isn't it obvious?” Yuuri asked, aiming for a teasing tone of voice, but it came out a little flat.

Viktor blinked at him, his expression blank.

“Um, no, it's not obvious,” he replied, and Yuuri felt himself flush a little.

“Well...” Yuuri began as he led Viktor over to the edge of the pool, where it gave way to a narrow stone ledge that was mostly above the water, but given how humid it was in the little cave, Yuuri had little worry that they would dry out. “I mean I want to be...you know _alone_ with you.”

“You said that already,” Viktor complained, his voice very close to a discontented whine. “Is this a human thing I didn't know about? Do humans not travel in groups?”

“No, no,” Yuuri said quickly, laughing a little as he wormed his way up onto the ledge, and helped Viktor up as well before he explained.

“When humans are...erm... _intimate_ with each other, they don't like to do it in front of others,” Yuuri said, flushing a deep crimson as he spoke. “I asked you if we could come here be alone together so we could be...well... _affectionate._ I mean, if you want to.”

“Inti—oh, you mean you want to mate?” Viktor asked, his eyes wide with pleasant surprise.

“ _Mate?_ ” Yuuri squeaked. “ _No!_ ”

“Yuuri,” Viktor said with a small groan, bowing his head forward to pinch his temple. “I don't understand what you want from me.”

“I'm sorry,” Yuuri replied, ducking his head a little as Viktor lifted his gaze to look at him. “I'm not very good at this.”

“Show me what you want, Yuuri,” Viktor said softly as he reached for his hand. “I trust you.”

Yuuri felt his breath catch, startled by both the request and the trust in Viktor's voice.

Yuuri knew that he didn't feel ready to have sex with Viktor—or _mate_ , as he called it—but Yuuri did want to _kiss_ Viktor. He wanted to kiss him and hold onto him, and never let go.

Yuuri shifted closer to Viktor, wiggling across the damp stone until their tails touched. The gleam of Viktor's silvery scales met Yuuri's onyx ones, and Yuuri heard Viktor inhale sharply. He glanced up, and saw Viktor's eyes gleaming with longing, as though he was beginning to understand what Yuuri wanted of him.

Yuuri lifted a hand to Viktor's cheek. The other merman's eyes went a little wide with surprise at the touch, and Yuuri heard Viktor's breath escape him with a sharp gasp.

“Am I being too pushy?” Yuuri asked, his hand beginning to fall away, and Viktor smiled as he shook his head, and lifted his hand to cover Yuuri's in order to stop him from pulling away.

“No, Yuuri,” Viktor replied. “Please, show me what you want.”

Yuuri nodded, smiling faintly. His heartbeat tripled with excitement as he leant in, and he kissed Viktor gently.

Unlike their last few kisses, this one was softer and less heated. Viktor's tail seemed to twitch, as though he wanted to move it somewhere, but did not actually shift it as he kissed Yuuri back.

Yuuri moved closer, and kissed Viktor more deeply. They parted occasionally to breathe, and Yuuri felt a modicum of warm pride swell in his chest at the punch-drunk look upon Viktor's face from the kissing—a look _he_ had put there.

“Feel good?” Yuuri asked softly, and Viktor bit his lip as he nodded fervently.

“This is all I wanted, Viktor,” Yuuri explained, pecking Viktor's lips with light kisses in between his words. “I wanted to lie with you, hold you, and kiss you. That is what I mean by affection. I want...erm... _mating_ with you, but...not yet. In the human world, that might make me seem like less of a man, because I don't want it right this second, but I want to enjoy my time with you, and not rush things. Does that make sense?”

“Yes,” Viktor confirmed as he leant in to press another kiss to Yuuri's lips. “It makes sense. If you are not ready for mating, I will not rush you, Yuuri. We will mate when you are ready, and not before.”

“I knew there was a reason I liked you so much,” Yuuri replied, smiling affectionately as he stroked a hand across Viktor's cheek, which earned him a bright, sunny smile.

 

~*~

 

Yuuri and Viktor settled in for the night, Yuuri resting in Viktor's arms, and gentle waves rolling over their tails occasionally, pleasantly.

“Do you think we should have gone back to the main cavern for the night?” Yuuri asked uncertainly as he gazed up at Viktor, and he smiled, his expression almost mischievous, and he pressed a kiss to Yuuri's forehead.

“Probably,” he admitted, “I know that Yuri will be very mad at us. For such a young one, he is very protective of his shiver, which includes you—regardless how cranky he is.”

Yuuri laughed, while Viktor continued to smile pleasantly. He cut off Yuuri's laughter with a kiss, one which Yuuri happily returned.

“We will go back to the cavern in the morning to face Yuri's wrath,” Viktor said reassuringly, and pecked Yuuri's lips again.

“I hope we'll survive it,” Yuuri said, and Viktor began to laugh.

“Yes,” he replied, “I hope so too.”

 

~*~

 

“Where the _hell_ have you two been?!”

Yuuri rolled his lips together to keep from laughing, and he glanced at Viktor, who seemed to be doing the same thing. As predicted, Yuri appeared to have prepared a rant for them, very much like an angry mother.

“ _You disappear in the middle of the night, no warning, no message, then you stay gone for two fucking days, we all thought you were dead, hanging out in some orca's belly, then you just_ show up _, what the hell—_ ”

“Aww, you got our Mother Hen all riled up again,” Mila said fondly, and began to giggle when Yuri shot a glare at her.

“You say that _every_ _time_ Viktor disappears, like I know what a hen is,” Yuri said grumpily, just as Otabek swam over and wrapped an arm around Yuri consolingly.

“Do not yell at them, Yura,” Otabek said, his voice low and soft. Something in his tone made the blond blush and cross his arms sulkily. “Look at their faces—I think it is fairly _obvious_ what they have been up to.”

Yuuri felt his face flood with colour, while Viktor snorted loudly, and Yuri shouted with disgust. Thankfully, it wasn't loud enough for the others to overhear, but that didn't seem to matter—their three reactions seemed to be enough to clue them in on what had been said.

“Well, _before that,_ we had a pretty interesting experience,” Viktor said casually, and Yuuri glanced at him uncertainly. Viktor paused, hesitating when he caught Yuuri's eye, but relaxed when Yuuri nodded, allowing him to continue.

“We visited with Yuuri's family,” Viktor said in a rush, and laughed nervously as the explanation stumbled out. “ _And_ I got to try a...a hot thing.”

“Tea,” Yuuri filled in, and both Otabek and Mila laughed.

“Did you like it, Viktor?” Mila asked curiously, and Viktor let out another nervous laugh.

“Well—”

“—are we all just going to _ignore_ the fact that you and Yuuri hung out with a bunch of _humans_?” Yuri interrupted, and all eyes turned towards Yuri.

“Yuri—” Otabek began to protest, and Yuri quickly cut him off.

“—No!” Yuri snapped, “Yuuri is endangering all of us, being so selfish to seek out his family like that!”

“Yuri, _stop it!_ ” Viktor shouted, making the blond jump in surprise at the sharpness of his tone. “Yuuri is doing no such thing, how _dare you_ insinuate that he'd ever do something like that!”

“You're not the leader of us, Viktor!” Yuri shot back, apparently getting his second wind, and fixed the other merman with a glare.

“But I'm still a member of this shiver!” Viktor countered. “Caution around humans I understand, but this vehement hatred is not good either. _Three_ members of this shiver came from human roots, and you are making them feel less welcome with this attitude!”

“My family would never try to hurt us,” Yuuri added, frowning at Yuri, and his angry glare snapped from Viktor to Yuuri.

“You became one of us barely two weeks ago,” Yuri snapped, “what the hell do _you_ know?”

Yuuri jerked back, startled by the anger and hate in Yuri's tone. Despite his need to appear confident in front of Yuri in order to convince him that his family was not a threat, the ferocity with which Yuri spoke made it difficult to maintain.

Thankfully, Otabek interrupted before the argument could go further, and swam in front of Yuri to stop him from physically seeing Yuuri and Viktor, and possibly continuing his tirade.

“Yura, that's enough,” Otabek said firmly. “You are not being fair to either Viktor _or_ Yuuri. You are blinded by what happened with my family, but not all humans hold hatred in their hearts. Viktor spoke many times of Yuuri and his family before he was changed, and you _know_ that they are ama—divers who are as much part of the sea as we are. It is clear to me and I think everyone else here that Yuuri's family would not tell the world, or hurt us for what Yuuri has become.”

Yuuri winced, thinking of Yuuko again, but he did not interrupt Otabek's speech. Instead, he moved closer to Viktor, and he brushed their tails together, seeking affection. Viktor smiled, and returned the gesture.

“You don't _know_ that,” Yuri countered, but his voice was weaker, though it was difficult to tell if it was due to Yuri questioning his stance of humans, or if Yuri was hurt that Otabek wasn't taking his side.

“I do know that, Yura,” Otabek replied, his voice softer and gentler. “I know your anger comes from a place of fear after what happened to us, but you mustn't take it out on Yuuri. His experience is not my experience.”

Otabek then pulled Yuri into his arms, holding him close for a moment before he turned to glance at Yuuri and Viktor. His expression was apologetic before he shifted his gaze back to Yuri as he murmured, “come on,” and guided him down to the tunnel, and they disappeared.

Yuuri gazed uncertainly at the remaining merpeople, even as Viktor slouched forward in visible relief.

“Oh, Yuuri, we're so sorry about that,” Mila said as she slipped off the rocks and swam forward to quickly embrace him. Sara got into the water, swam up next to her girlfriend, and offered Mila a one armed embrace.

“Yuri has more cause than most to fear humans, after what he saw Otabek endure,” Sara offered. “It's not against you, or your family. It's his own feelings.”

“Can I ask what happened?” Yuuri asked curiously, following the others back to the edge of the pool, and he and Viktor slipped onto the well-worn stones next to Mila and Sara.

“It is a very sad story,” Georgi said as he bowed his head, the only one who had not moved from his perch, and clutched an unopened mussel in his hands like it was a microphone. “It is quite personal, but in light of Yuri's explosion at you, I think you deserve to hear the story. Do you all agree?”

“Yes!” Mila and Sara said in sync, punching the air like they were watching a sporting event.

“I agree too,” Viktor said, though his response was calmer than the others'.

“Then it begins when Yuri had snuck away from our shiver,” Georgi said, his voice carrying a lilt to it like a dramatic Shakespearean actor. “He was determined to strike out on his own, but he was young, and not yet considered an adult. He had few means to defend himself against predators, or find food.

“He made it from our feeding grounds in the South Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean, before he got to the Caspian Sea,” Georgi continued. “There, he ran into some trouble. He was hungry, saw a cluster of fish, almost like a shoal, but he failed to see the net.

“Well, you know how Yuri is,” Georgi said with a warm laugh. “He is all fire and little brains, especially when he's mad. He is not unintelligent, but he has a bad habit of letting his emotions get the better of him, and I am sure you can imagine what happened—a young man had netted him, and Yuri cursed and yelled at him, startling the young man so much that he dropped the net back in the water!”

“Was that Otabek?” Yuuri asked curiously, and Georgi nodded.

“Indeed it was,” Georgi confirmed at once. “Later, Otabek told us that he lied to his father, telling him he'd accidentally netted an ordinary swimmer, which his father scarcely believed, given that Yuri had used his fin barbs to cut the net and escape, leaving the thing in tatters.

“However, Otabek was deeply curious about the young man he'd accidentally caught. On calm nights, he snuck out to the coast with his rowboat, and rowed out as far as he dared, but he never saw the beautiful young man he'd laid eyes on.

“What he didn't know was he was being watched,” Georgi said with a wry smile. “Yuri was just as curious, and did not understand what the human was looking for. Eventually, his curiosity got the better of him, and he confronted Otabek, _demanding_ to know what Otabek was up to.”

“That sounds like Yuri,” Yuuri mumbled, and Viktor huffed a soft laugh while Georgi continued the story.

“Well, Otabek calmly told him of his curiosity, taking the proverbial wind out of Yuri's sails. Yuri had come for a fight, and Otabek wasn't interested in that. He just wanted to make sure that Yuri had been real.

“At first, Yuri had thought that was it, and he wouldn't see the human again. However, when Otabek was not fishing with his father, he was at the beach, looking for Yuri.

“Again, it took several visits before Yuri would approach him, and when he did, Otabek kissed his hand—a bold move for the era, at least in human circles. Yuri was so startled that he didn't know what to do. Fearful of being spotted, he guided Otabek out to sea, and to a cavern at the base of a cliff—not unlike the cave that he favours out here.”

“They went to a place for privacy...” Yuuri murmured to Viktor softly. “Do we want to know what happened next?”

“Well,” Georgi said, chuckling, clearly having overheard Yuuri's remark, “when Otabek left that cavern, it was with fins. I feel that it is safe to assume we _know_ what happened.”

Yuuri's face flushed, and he looked down. Viktor chuckled warmly, and took his hand.

“Otabek took some time to acclimate to his new life, not unlike you did—learning to swim, learning echolocation, all of that, but he still missed his family. He wanted to see them, if nothing else, to reassure them that he hadn't drowned at sea. Yuri, so young and full of foolish optimism, was happy to accompany Otabek on this quest, searching the coasts every day for Otabek's family.”

“Based on how Yuri is now, I would assume that it did not go well,” Yuuri said, his voice a little dry, and Georgi smiled at him sadly.

“You could say that,” his tone rather grave, and Yuuri felt his stomach churn uneasily. “When they found Otabek's family and Otabek showed himself, they believed him to be a demon impersonating their dead son. They netted him, dragged him ashore, and they pinned him to the beach before they plunged iron stakes through his hands and the base of his tail with hammers. Otabek was screaming, and Yuri was terrified. The family prayed over him, and produced a knife, clearly intending to kill him, and, as I am sure you now know, in dire situations, certain merfolk can call on the sky to aid them.

“Yuri was young, however, and had no control over it, not a how an adult merman might. His overwhelming fear of losing Otabek eclipsed all else, and black clouds covered the sky. Lightning rained down, striking Otabek's father dead, and it narrowly missed his mother. She and Otabek's three brothers all fled, screaming about demons, and Yuri, amidst torrential rain and booming thunder, crawled ashore, protected from drying out by the oddly salty rainwater. He freed Otabek and guided him into the deep where he could heal safely, protected by the sea. Ever since, Yuri has deeply mistrusted humans after what he witnessed that day.”

Georgi's story wound to a close, and he bowed his head respectfully. Yuuri found he didn't know what to say that didn't sound insensitive or rude. His mind was blank with shock at how the story had concluded, and he understood fully why Yuri would feel such deep hatred for humans in any capacity after what he had seen.

“I...don't know what to say,” Yuuri said at last, “that's just....just _awful_.”

“We caught up with them not long after the ordeal took place,” Mila added. “Yakov, our old leader, was ready to give him an earful for taking off, but once he saw the shellshocked Yuri and Otabek's healing wounds, he just told him not to run off again, and Yuri never did. He rarely goes close to shore, not even to look for shellfish. It's been a hundred and fifty years, and Yuri is still very wary of humans.”

“His anger at me for wanting to see my family makes more sense now,” Yuuri conceded, bowing his head a little, while he tried to swallow his shock that Yuri was well over a hundred years old—he looked so _young_. There would be time enough to question the lifespan of merpeople later.

“Yeah,” Mila agreed, and she offered Yuuri a small smile.

 

~*~

 

Later that night after everyone had gone to sleep, Yuuri listened to the soft sound of splashing as Yuri and Otabek returned at last, closely followed by soft whispers as they strove to keep from waking the others.

Yuuri lay still, pretending to be asleep with Viktor at his back, until Yuri settled down next to Yuuri, and started a little when he saw that Yuuri's eyes were open.

“Hey,” Yuuri whispered softly. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Yuri grumbled, not quite willing to meet Yuuri's eye. “Sorry about...before, I guess.”

“It's fine,” Yuuri replied, smiling a little. “Um...my family...well...they invited me and Viktor...all of us, really, to a sort of...meal-thing tomorrow. They said they'd find a secluded beach with tidepools for us to sit in, and they'd bring extra blankets to hide our tails, in case someone wanders by. It'd be nice if you and Otabek came too, but I'd understand if you don't want to come.”

“They told you everything, eh?” Yuri asked, still not quite able to look up, and Yuuri smiled at him apologetically.

“Um...yeah.”

“Whatever. It was a long time ago,” Yuri muttered, rolling over and cuddling into Otabek's arms without answering Yuuri's invitation.

Yuuri mimicked Yuri, rolling over and curling up closer to Viktor.

Viktor hugged him close and pressed a kiss to his forehead, a silent promise that things would be all right

Despite this, to Yuuri it had begun to feel like they never would be.

Yuuri squeezed his eyes shut, and tried to get some sleep.

 


	13. Family Picnic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I AM SO SORRY FOR BEING LATE! Party weekend sucked up all my editing time ;_; Next update is scheduled for May 19th. Enjoy! :D

Chapter Thirteen – Family Picnic

 

As Yuuri rose to the surface, flanked by a large group of merfolk, he could not help but feel a tendril of fear leak into his excitement, muddling it.

Was this a good idea?

Was this a _terrible_ idea?

Yuuri couldn't decide.

As he swam, he tried to look back to who was accompanying him, but in the impenetrable dark it was impossible. He didn't use his echolocation—he didn't want his companions to know that he was staring.

Viktor, Mila, Sara, and Georgi.

None too surprisingly, Yuri had elected to stay behind, and Otabek with him. Yuri hadn't even bothered to offer up a lame excuse—he merely gazed at Yuuri, and shook his head.

More surprising however was that Yuri hadn't even barked any dire warnings at the others as they made ready to leave the cavern, he just stared.

Yuuri shivered involuntarily, unnerved by the memory of the haunted look in Yuri's eyes. Viktor immediately sped up to join him at his side, their hands finding each other, and their fingers laced together.

Yuuri wished he could speak underwater, and perhaps say something to Viktor, but given that he couldn't, he settled for holding his hand tightly as they made their way towards the surface.

When their heads at last broke through the water just off the familiar beach that his family frequented, Yuuri spotted only one sole person on the beach, though even at a distance he could tell that it was Mari.

“Can you guys stay here a second? I just wanna see what's up.” Yuuri explained, turning to the others, and they all nodded.

“Be careful, Yuuri,” Sara said, and Yuuri smiled, his heart warmed by her concern as he turned and swam towards the shore, with Viktor's hand still in his.

Yuuri swam with Viktor, his eyes on the shoreline for possible humans other than his sister, and his sister stepped into the shallows, shoes and all, despite the chill of the season.

“Okaasan found a little cove a few hundred metres west of here,” Mari said, pointing towards the _Iwa-chu,_ and beyond it. “It's pretty sheltered, and it has lots of tidepools.”

“Why didn't Okaasan and Otousan meet us here?” Yuuri asked curiously, his head bobbing a little in understanding to the directions. He was pretty sure he knew the cove Mari was talking about.

“Okaasan _may_ have gone overboard with the food, and she and Otousan are getting everything set up...” Mari explained with a wry smile, making Yuuri laugh. _Of course_ she did. “Go on, go get your mer-buddies. I'll meet you there.”

“Okay,” Yuuri replied with a short laugh. “I'll see you there.”

Yuuri backed into the deeper water as his sister waved and ran up towards the road. Yuuri felt a dull ache in his stomach, a longing to follow her.

Yuuri forced it back, wondering if he'd ever be able to be truly happy like this, in this new life. However, now was not the time to dwell on it, and he shunted his melancholy behind a smiling mask as he turned back to his new friends.

“Mari said that my okaasan and otousan are at a cove near to here. It's pretty secluded, so there's not much chance that anyone will see us,” Yuuri explained, flicking his tail to stay afloat, but Viktor seemed to sense the agitation in the act, and placed a hand at his lower back, rubbing in slow, steady circles, perhaps in an attempt to soothe him.

“Will your parents be okay with all of us coming?” Mila asked, cocking her head to the side, her eyes wide with worry, but not fear, which was a relief.

“Yeah,” Yuuri replied as he smiled at her. “My okaasan loves it when I bring friends over.”

“And I am certain she would have adequately prepared for our presence, Mila,” Georgi added smoothly. “From how Yuuri talks of his mother, she is quite enamoured with merfolk...or, at least, the mythologies surrounding us.”

“Come on,” Viktor said softly, leaning in to press a kiss to Yuuri's cheek, causing him to blush and making the others titter. “I know your mother and father will be happy to meet everyone, and we will save a seat for Yuri and Otabek if they change their minds and decide to join us.”

“Are they really likely to?” Yuuri asked dubiously, “I don't want Yuri or Otabek to feel obligated to come, especially after what Georgi said...”

“Yuri is very much like the open sea,” Georgi offered, “his moods change like the currents—very suddenly, and without warning.”

“Oh, that is very much Yuri!” Viktor replied with a warm chuckle. “Though I believe Yuri is much more forgiving than the open sea—he generally does not try to kill us unless he is in a _very_ bad mood.”

“He cares in his own way,” Sara piped up. “He's just...grumpy.”

“Really?” Yuuri asked teasingly as he offered Sara a smile. “I hadn't noticed.”

They all chortled, somewhere between amusement and apprehension for what was to come. Yuuri motioned for them to follow, and they made for the cove.

As a group, they swam to the spot Mari had indicated. It was not far, but they were hindered from going quickly by the occasional fisherman or beach-goer. When one was spotted, they all dove down into the safety of the kelp forest that skirted the edge of this area of the beach, hiding them.

 

At last they arrived at the cove, and indeed the high stone and tall trees made it virtually impossible for anyone to observe them from the street. Yuuri had come here once or twice with his old university friend, Phichit, and they would build driftwood fires, drink cheap sake, and eat dango until they burst.

Seeing his family in the same spot was a little odd, along with a huge woven picnic basket, little portable charcoal grill, and blankets covering most of the rocky shore. In an odd way, it was almost like coming home.

“ _Viktor, Yuuri!_ ” Yuuri's mother called, waving an arm, “ _over here!_ ”

Yuuri's smile broadened as he flicked his tail, coming closer to the shore. As promised, he spotted a few tidepools higher on the beach, all of them wide enough to fit them, and they had been cleared out of crabs, urchins, and other creatures, sparing them from being bitten, pinched, or stung if they were sat upon by one of the merfolk.

“Okaasan!” Yuuri cried, waving in return, “it's so good to see you!”

His mother got up from setting up the grill, and hurried to the waterline where she swept her son into an enormous bear hug, like she had not seen him in months.

“Oh, and Viktor!” his mother said as she spotted him, and pulled him in for a hug as well, making the other merman let out a little squeak of surprise. “You two look so _wonderful_ , and I hope you're hungry, we brought _plenty_ of food! _”_

“Yeah, we're hungry, Okaasan” Yuuri replied as he and Viktor wiggled up the bank in order to slip into one of the tidepools, laughing a little. His mirth died in his throat however when he turned back to glance at his friends, he spotted them all hanging back, still in deep water, and they were regarding Yuuri's parents uncertainly.

“Oh, your friends...” his mother said, her voice almost mournful, then raised her voice a little as she gazed at them. “Please, we mean no harm. We just want to get to know you all.”

Yuuri bit his lip, his eyes flitting between his parents and his new friends. Viktor shifted next to Yuuri in the tidepool, and squeezed his hand.

Mila was the first to inch forward. Sara gasped, her eyes wide, as though she just witnessed Mila step off a cliff.

Hiroko's smile widened, beaming, and she bowed respectfully as Mila stopped at the edge of the second tidepool.

“I'm...um...Mila,” she said, her voice tentative, and Hiroko bowed again.

“I am pleased to meet you, Mila,” Hiroko said, her English perfect, if marred by a thick accent. “Will your other friends join us?”

“I hope so,” she said with a sweet smile. “You seem pretty nice.”

“Yuuri is not the only one whose life has been touched by the magic of the merfolk,” she said, her eyes twinkling in a mysterious sort of way—a way that seemed to extend beyond her encounter with the mermaids in Crete.

Yuuri shook his head a little as he eyed his mother. Was he overthinking things?

He wasn't sure, but as he refocused on the conversation, he smiled when he spotted Sara and Georgi inching forward, their bodies taut, as though they were prepared to bolt if Yuuri's parents made any sort of wrong move.

Hiroko watched and waited, her smile open and welcome. Behind her, Toshiya was unpacking a tall glass jar filled with yakitori skewers—some of shishito peppers, and others of chicken, both sitting in a marinade. He was smiling to himself as he worked, his head bobbing from side to side to a tune only he could hear, appearing quite content to keep his distance until the merfolk figured out that he and Hiroko meant them no harm.

Mila seemed to be the bravest of them, smiling as she slipped into one of the tidepools, chattering to Hiroko cheerfully.

When nothing bad happened to her, the others appeared heartened by it, and Sara and Georgi swam forward, exchanging nervous but hopeful looks as they went.

Hiroko greeted each of them warmly, switching to English flawlessly, and she bowed or shook the hands of both Georgi and Sara as they approached. Once they had settled into the tidepools, Toshiya stepped forward, beaming at them all warmly.

“It is so nice to meet you all,” Yuuri's father said kindly. “We love our son no matter what choices he makes in life, and we feel very honoured that you would trust us today; I imagine it was not easy.”

Yuuri smiled, relief once more flooding through him as Mari joined in, greeting them all and exchanging pleasantries with Yuuri's new friends.

“I hope you're hungry,” Hiroko repeated cheerily as she began to fill the little grill with charcoal, then drizzled it with lighter fluid. “We have _plenty_.”

“Starving,” Yuuri replied, smiling broadly as he took Viktor's hand, and his heart fluttered when their fingers laced together.

“Yeah,” Mila agreed, “It's been a _long_ time since I've had human food.”

“Is human food so different?” Georgi asked curiously, cocking his head to the side, and Mila and Sara both giggled.

“Yeah, it is,” Mila confirmed. “You can't have cake underwater.”

“I keep hearing about this _cake_ stuff,” Viktor complained, though his lilting, almost teasing tone told Yuuri that he wasn't really upset. “What's so special about it?”

“It can't be better than scallops,” Sara said, making Yuuri and Mila laugh.

“Oh, just wait and see,” Yuuri said with a grin, “I promise you guys will _love_ it.”

 

As the day progressed, Yuuri could not decide what he loved more—his two families uniting like this, or how fascinated the born merpeople were by the art of applying heat to food.

“It's shrinking!” Sara cried, perhaps too dramatically as she pointed to the skewer of peppers on the grill, watching as they cooked and lost some of their moisture, which made his mother smile, his father chuckle warmly, and Mari snort loudly.

“It's what happens when something is cooked like this,” his mother explained patiently, “the heat draws out the moisture, making it shrink.”

Yuuri smiled to himself as he listened to his mother patiently explain the process of cooking to Sara. She seemed amazed with Hiroko, like she was performing some sort of incredible magic spell.

Yuuri leant gently against Viktor. For half a moment, Yuuri worried that Viktor might not understand what Yuuri was doing and speak aloud about it (which would be more than a little embarrassing) but, thankfully, Viktor seemed to understand this act, and silently wrapped an arm around Yuuri's waist.

Yuuri felt his stomach somersault with joy, giddy with the feeling of his boyfriend (merfriend? Yuuri wasn't completely sure) sitting with his family, and his friends, and all of them acting like nothing was wrong, like all of this was _normal_.

Well, almost all of them.

Yuuri did his best to swallow his anguish, but he wasn't certain how well he managed it. He wished Yuuko was here, smiling and laughing with the rest of them. He wished being around humans wasn't so scary for Yuri, and that he and Otabek could come.

Yuuri wished a lot of things, but he had no idea if they were selfish wishes or not.

He just wanted his whole family together. Was that a bad thing?

He wasn't so sure.

Yuuri felt a warm piece of bamboo being pressed into his hand, and he smiled when he came back to himself and spotted his sister pressing a yakitori skewer on him.

“Thanks,” Yuuri said, and Mari nodded at him, her lips quirking into a faint smile.

“Just eat, Yuuri,” she said, “if you keep thinking like that, you'll hurt yourself.”

Yuuri laughed weakly, and closed his teeth over a piece of the grilled chicken, savouring the sour-sweet taste of the sauce that clung to the meat. It had felt like _years_ since he last had food like this.

Yuuri giggled, his sound almost maniacal. It was hard to believe he'd only been a merman for a few weeks.

  
As Yuuri ate, he shifted his gaze to Viktor, smiling as he watched him puff up his cheeks, chipmunk like, and blow on the food as hard as he could.

He spotted Sara and Georgi mimicking him, and Yuuri bit his lip in an effort to keep from laughing, while his sister and parents did not seem to be faring much better—his mother was hiding her face in her hand, his father's shoulders were quaking, and Mari's lips were rolled together as she gazed skyward.

Yuuri calmed down slowly, and when he at last glanced back to Viktor, it was in time to see the merman sink his teeth into the piece of chicken at the end of the skewer, a look of shock coming over his face, as though he was pleasantly surprised to have liked it so much.

“This is _good_!” Viktor proclaimed. “How...why does it have two flavours?”

“From this, Viktor!” Hiroko said with a warm giggle as she held up the jar that still held some of the marinade. “We combine things to create new tastes. That is why there are many flavours.”

“Oh.” His cheeks tinged pink, and Yuuri smiled warmly as he laid his hand on Viktor's tail in a reassuring move, not far from where a knee might have been on a normal human.

“Don't worry, Viktor,” Yuuri murmured softly and reassuringly. “It's not bad that you didn't know, plus...I think your reactions are cute.”

“Cute?” Viktor asked, keeping his voice low in order to lessen the chances of the others overhearing them.

“Yeah,” Yuuri affirmed. “Very cute. You don't need to be embarrassed or need to hide it if you're excited about something, okay?”

“Okay.”

Viktor smiled, his expression warm and soft, and he leant in to peck Yuuri's lips softly.

The kiss earned him a few titters from his family, but no outright teasing, for which Yuuri was grateful.

As he pulled away from Viktor, smiling and gazing around at his family, his eyes drifted, and fell upon the pathway that led up to the road.

Yuuri's jovial mood immediately drained away.

Peering at them through the bare, winter foliage was a human, one whom Yuuri immediately recognized.

Yuuko.

 


	14. Hesitation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: A little shorter than I'd intended, but I hope you guys enjoy it all the same! Next update is scheduled for June 2nd.

Chapter Fourteen – Hesitation

 

Yuuri froze as he gazed up at his friend.

Yuuko was hiding behind some trees and leafless bushes. She was peeking out hesitantly, as though she thought her hiding place was a good one. Clearly, she did not intend for Yuuri and the others to see her, nor did she seem to have any intention of coming down and joining them.

Yuuri bit his lip, his hand tightening around the skewer in his hand while he tried to decide what to do. He could see by Yuuko's body language that she was nervous, and Yuuri feared doing anything that might accidentally scare her off.

A hand slid over his scales, and Yuuri jumped. He turned to Viktor, whose brow was creased with concern, and Yuuri forced a smile as he took his hand.

“I'm okay,” Yuuri said before Viktor could ask. “I just saw—”

Yuuri broke off when he glanced up again.

Yuuko was gone.

Yuuri dropped his gaze back to Viktor, his lips parted, but his throat closed, at a loss for what to say. Had he just _thought_ he'd seen Yuuko, when in reality nothing was there? If she really _was_ there, why had she taken off so fast?

Yuuri didn't think she was taking pictures of them to spread all over the internet, or something equally as bad—her phone wasn't exactly the most high-tech thing, and Yuuri could recall teasing her more than once about how slow it was, and how long it would take to snap a picture. Had that been her plan, Yuuri was certain that he would have seen the phone.

More than anything, Yuuri wanted to go up there and follow Yuuko, and was on the cusp of doing just that before he _remembered._

He couldn't leave the sea.

His throat tightened again, and he clenched his hands into fists in quiet frustration. What was he going to do? If he waited too long, Yuuko would be gone for sure. He wanted—no, he _needed_ his best friend back.

“Okaasan?” Yuuri asked, at a loss for what else to do as he gazed desperately at his mother.

“Yes, Yuuri?” his mother asked, turning to him with a pleasant smile.

“Erm...I think...I mean, can you...” Yuuri trailed off, huffed, and shook his head. “I—I think I saw Yuuko up there.”

He paused, and pointed up the narrow pathway where he'd seen his friend. “Can you—”

Before Yuuri could finish, his mother was on her feet and racing up towards the road. Yuuri watched her go, his lip caught between his teeth, and he felt Viktor's hand tense in his.

“Is this Yuuko...bad?” Viktor murmured softly, causing Yuuri to turn to him, his lips parted in surprise. He almost wanted to be angry with Viktor for his question, before belatedly remembering that Viktor's only prior experience with Yuuko was when he'd initially met her before she subsequently ran from the cave, and then what Yuuri had later relayed to him about Yuuko's superstitious beliefs.

“Yuuko isn't bad,” Yuuri replied calmly, his eyes flitting briefly to the others, intent to silently impart on them that if his friend had indeed been there, she meant them no harm. “She's just...afraid. Sometimes people fear things that they don't understand.”

“Is she like Otabek's family?” Sara asked, and Yuuri winced.

“No, she's not,” Viktor filled in before Yuuri could answer, his voice edged with warning, as though Sara had said something deeply shameful. Yuuri felt himself warm at Viktor's immediate support of Yuuko, despite how little he truly knew of her. “She is just afraid.”

“Fear can be dangerous as well,” Georgi said, his voice heavy with warning, and Yuuri frowned, but Viktor jumped in before Yuuri could speak.

“Not this sort of fear, Georgi,” Viktor said. “She runs, she does not wish to cause harm.”

Yuuri opened his mouth, intending to speak on Yuuko's behalf, when he saw his mother reappear at the top of the trail.

And behind her, was Yuuko.

Unlike before, Yuuko did not look frightened. Her expression was set with determination, a visage Yuuri had seen before, though usually when she'd been foiled by a crab that she was trying to catch.

Yuuri could not quite fathom what was currently causing Yuuko to look that way, but he was given little time to think about it, given that the second she and Hiroko made it to the picnic, she veered around Hiroko, and drove her hand into her pocket as she raced towards Yuuri.

“ _Demon, begone!_ ” Yuuko cried, even as the merfolk began to scream and dive into the water, but Yuuri was too stunned to move beyond drop his yakitori skewer in surprise as Yuuko slapped the warding slip against to his forehead with such force that Yuuri jerked back a little.

“Yu-chan,” Yuuri said, his voice deadened and laced with annoyance, “I'm _not_ a demon.”

Yuuri turned towards the sea, just as three heads popped out of the water, about twenty feet out, still with the slip stuck to his forehead. Viktor was still next to him, looking utterly bewildered.

“It's okay!” Yuuri called, “Yuuko just thinks I'm a demon, there's no danger.”

Mila started to laugh at Yuuri's explanation, while Georgi and Sara exchanged a bemused look. However, when Mila began to swim back towards the shore, the other two followed, as though encouraged by the mermaid's fearlessness.

When Yuuri turned back around, Yuuko was gazing at him uncertainly.

“Yu-chan, I'm _not_ a demon,” he repeated firmly, “so you can stop looking at me like that.” Yuuri grumpily yanked the slip off his face. Behind his dumbstruck friend, Yuuri could see his family trying very hard not to laugh.

“Look,” Yuuri said with a huff, and slapped the slip onto his arm before he began to speak in a dull monotone. “Oh, the pain. Look how it hurts me by ineffectually sticking to my skin. Ow, ow...”

“Oh, Yuuri, stop teasing Yu-chan,” his mother said with a warm chuckle before she stepped up to Yuuko's side and touched the young woman's shoulder gently. “It's natural to fear something you have never seen before, and it would not be fair to tease Yuuko for it.”

Yuuri scowled at his mother, not quite understanding why his mother was taking Yuuko's side, especially when his friend still looked like she might bolt at any moment.

Yuuri yanked off the slip, crumpled it up, and tossed it into the ocean. The other merfolk all watched as the water soaked into the paper, the ink bleeding away before a small wave drew the paper back, and it disappeared into the sea.

“Yu-chan, it's still _me_ ,” Yuuri said as he turned back to his friend, who still looked tense and afraid. “My family still loves me, why are you acting like I am a monster? I'm _not_. I know my okaasan, and she probably told you this a thousand times, already and explained everything to you over and over. I didn't ask for this, I didn't _make_ this happen, but it's not something I can fight, either. It's just...”

Yuuri trailed off, and looked to Viktor.

He didn't know what it was, but he knew that it was _good._

Viktor smiled as he took Yuuri's hand again, and squeezed it gently.

“I was human too once,” Mila piped up as she regarded Yuuko hesitantly. “But when I fell in love and me and Sara kissed...I changed. It's not good or bad, Yuuri's Friend, it just _is_.”

“Yuuko,” Yuuko said as she shifted her eyes to Mila. “My name...it's Yuuko.”

“Nice to meet you, Yuuko,” Mila said, smiling at her warmly. “My name is Mila.”

“I'm Sara,” Sara offered.

“Georgi,” Georgi added.

“And I am Viktor,” Viktor finished. “If you wish to blame anyone for Yuuri's transformation—”

“—Viktor, don't ruin the moment,” Yuuri interrupted, making everyone laugh, even Yuuko.

 

~*~

 

Yuuri could not say that the picnic was particularly _comfortable_ following Yuuko's appearance, but by the same token, it was far less tense than it could have been.

Mila and Sara in particular seemed keen to befriend Yuuko, who brightened if only slightly as they ate their way through half a dozen yakitori, provided she did not look down at their tails.

Yuuri smiled weakly as he watched his friend. Clearly, she still had some accepting to do.

 

“Okay, it's time!” Hiroko suddenly cried, drawing Yuuri out of his bubble of thought.

“Time for what?” Yuuri asked as he turned to his mother, and spotted her digging into the picnic basket again, and began to laugh as his mother produced their family's favourite sponge cake, iced with whipped cream, and topped with glazed strawberries.

“What's that thing?” Sara and Viktor asked at the same time, making both Yuuri and Mila begin to laugh.

“That,” Yuuri said, “is cake.”

“Is it like oyster?” Sara asked curiously, shifting forward in her tidepool to regard the pastry, making Mila giggle while Mari helped her mother break out the plates, forks, and a knife.

“Much sweeter,” Yuuri offered, chuckling as he watched surprise crossed Sara's face, and Georgi crossed his arms and nodded knowledgeably, though Yuuri had a feeling that the merman was doing it just for show, rather than actually knowing what cake tasted like.

Hiroko sliced the cake, handing out full slices to all the humans and former humans, and slightly smaller pieces for the born merfolk, which Yuuri supposed was insurance in case they didn't like it, rather than some form of favouritism.

“Enjoy, everyone!” his mother said cheerily as she handed out the plates.

Viktor watched Yuuri with an uncertain look in his eye, holding the plate somewhat awkwardly until Yuuri showed him how to rest it across his lap, and he picked up the fork, and regarded it curiously.

“Can you eat this thing?” Viktor asked, and Yuuri snorted.

“It's a dingle-hopper! It's for your hair!” Mari called, and Yuuri rolled his eyes.

“No it's not,” Yuuri interjected quickly as he picked up his own fork. “It's a _fork._ You use it to pick the cake up—like this.”

With precise movements, Yuuri sliced through the tip of the cake, and brought it into his mouth, just barely managing to swallow a moan at the perfectly sweet taste of the cake.

With somewhat less dexterity, Viktor closed his fist around the fork's handle, stabbed the fork into the middle of the pastry, and lifted the whole thing to his mouth.

Yuuri rolled his lips together to try and keep from laughing as he watched Viktor try and fit the whole piece into his mouth (with no success whatsoever) and did not seem to even notice as the bottom layer of the cake slice fell off his fork, and landed whipped cream-side-down back on his plate with an audible _splat!_

“Viktor,” Yuuri said gently, at last taking pity on him, and touched his arm lightly to draw his attention back to Yuuri. “Put the cake down. Break it into pieces before you try to eat it.”

“Oh.” Viktor flushed, and out of the corner of Yuuri's eye, he could see Yuuko trying very hard not to laugh.

This time, Viktor cut into the cake with the edge of his fork, though without any sort of practised finesse, and the cake turned into something of a mess on his plate. If the merman was embarrassed by this, he did not show it, and mirrored Yuuri as he scooped up a piece, and brought it to his lips.

“It's sweet!” Viktor proclaimed, his voice thick around the food in his mouth. “And it's...it's...bouncy.”

Mari snorted, almost dropping the strawberry off her fork as Viktor clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, as though he could not quite find the right words to accurately describe what he was tasting.

“We usually call it fluffy, Viktor,” Yuuri offered, smiling, “but you can stick with bouncy if you want to.”

“I think bouncy works better,” Viktor said, poking his fork into the cake remnants on his plate for emphasis, as though to show how it bounced, but the tines merely sank into another piece of the confection, making Yuuri smile at Viktor fondly.

They ate their cake, and Viktor seemed to like everything about it, save for the strawberry on top. It appeared as though the merman couldn't decide whether he liked the sour-sweet taste of the fruit or not.

Beyond them, Mila was demonstrating to Georgi and Sara why they couldn't bring the cake back to their cave by dropping the small dredges of the cake into the water to show how it dissolved, which the two born merfolk seemed to find utterly fascinating.

Amidst the pleasant chaos around him, Yuuri cast a quick glance towards Yuuko.

She was far away from her usual bubbly self, and she was eating her slice of cake quietly. She wasn't looking at anyone, and instead she appeared hyper-fixated on her food, which she was taking small and measured bites of.

To Yuuri, it seemed like she didn't know how to act with him anymore. She opened up only slightly to Sara and Mila before closing in on herself again, and after her ridiculous _exorcism_ attempt, she'd barely said two words to him.

He appreciated that she was here all the same, but Yuuri could not work out if she was trying to mend their friendship or not.

“Give her some time, Yuuri,” Viktor whispered as he pressed his palm against the ebony scales near Yuuri's lap, his voice warm and reassuring. “She is here. That in itself tells you that she wants things fixed.”

“I hope so,” Yuuri replied just as softly, adjusting his position in the tide pool in order to lean against Viktor's side.

“Would you like to be... _affectionate_ tonight? Would that calm your worries?” Viktor whispered, as though he realized that for humans the sort of affection he was implying was a private thing, and he kept his voice low. “We can go to Our Cave.”

Yuuri did not know if such a thing would really help—fact, Yuuri thought it might only temporarily make him forget what was going on with his family, and not remedy it at all.

However, the allure of some privacy was a powerful thing, and Yuuri found that he was powerless against Viktor's sweet, hesitant offer.

“Yeah,” Yuuri agreed, lifting his head in order to press a light kiss to Viktor's lips, earning several coos and teasing calls from his family. “Let's do that.”

 


	15. Affection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Next update is scheduled for June 16th. Enjoy! :)

Chapter Fifteen – Affection

 

The remainder of the visit with Yuuri's family was somewhat strained due to Yuuko's presence, but not exactly as unpleasant as it could have been.

Yuuko's attitude had continued to utterly _baffle_ Yuuri. He knew that her fear stemmed out of a number of misguided superstitions, but she had always been so _accepting_ of things before—like when he'd told her he was gay.

 

“ _Oh, Yuuri, I know,” she said cheerfully that memorable lunchtime in her third year of high school, and Yuuri's first year. They were on the roof and sharing Yuuri's bento, and in between bites of octopus-shaped sausage, she offered Yuuri a bright smile. “It's all right, I won't say anything 'til you're ready to tell everyone else.”_

 

And she _hadn't_. For nearly two years she said nothing until Yuuri had finally gathered up the courage to tell his family, all of whom were equally as unsurprised by his revelation. Apparently, it had been just as obvious to them as it had been to Yuuko.

_So why is this different?_ Yuuri wondered as he bid his family goodbye that evening, hugging all of them, except Yuuko, who was still too nervous to get close. _Why is she having such a hard time with this?_

“Don't worry about Yu-chan,” his mother whispered softly in his ear while she hugged him goodbye. “She just needs time; I'll talk to her. Or maybe you two can get together privately sometime soon and just _talk_.”

Yuuri didn't know if that would work, but he was willing to try nonetheless. He nodded, not quite certain if he was up to speaking, but he was deeply grateful to his mother for helping him so much with this—she clearly wanted Yuuri to have his best friend back as much as he did.

Hiroko took the time to hug the other merfolk goodbye as well, talking to them about scheduling another picnic before it snowed, while Mila made promises to try and convince Yuri to come next time. Yuuri doubted that this would actually happen, though he didn't want to sound too negative, and instead said nothing.

“Yuuri and I are going to another cave,” Viktor whispered to Mila as they waded out of the tide pools and into deeper water. All of them had begun to shift their tail colours to varying shades of red, except Yuuri, who still hadn't mastered the skill. “Can you say something to Yuri so he doesn't freak out again?”

“Going to practice mating?” Mila asked, waggling her eyebrows at Viktor crudely, which made Yuuri blush a deep crimson. “You _do_ remember that neither of you can lay eggs, right?”

“Maybe if we practice enough, I'll master the skill,” Viktor shot back, smiling as he said it, and Mila laughed loudly.

Yuuri's face still felt very hot, even as Viktor took his hand and threaded their fingers together. They bid the others goodbye, ignoring their lighthearted teasing, and Yuuri felt a modicum of relief flood him as they descended beneath the waves, and down into the deep.

Under the water, Yuuri watched the others swim to the opposite end of the dropoff where their deeper cave lay. Even without the use of their voices, Yuuri was able to see the others' reactions to Viktor's pronouncement—Georgi was swimming down with his hands pressed over his heart, while Sara and Mila were holding hands and twirling together through the water.

Yuuri wasn't completely sure if they were trying to tease him and Viktor or not, or if they were happy for them. It was hard to tell on the best of days, but something told Yuuri that this time it was probably the latter—it was like their love genuinely made them happy.

Viktor spun through the water with Yuuri, His mouth spread into a wide smile, and Yuuri laughed, a stream of bubbles escaping from past his lips. Viktor drew him close, as though they were dancing, and he captured his lips in a sweet kiss.

Yuuri's arms lifted to wrap around Viktor's neck, his tail fanning lazily in the current, allowing Viktor to lead them to the cave.

Viktor used his echolocation to direct them, and continued to kiss Yuuri as they moved. Yuuri could hear his clicks, and tried to replicate them, but kissing and using his echolocation all at once was too disorienting, and Yuuri quickly gave in, allowing Viktor to guide him.

Viktor quivered, as though he was laughing even as they kissed. Yuuri held on tighter, marvelling in how he could kiss Viktor as long as he wanted, without worry that he would run out of air.

This realization made Yuuri's excitement soar even higher—he couldn't _wait_ to get to the cave.

 

~*~

 

Upon reaching the cavern at last, Yuuri let out a little whine of discontentment when Viktor broke the kiss, and the elder merman laughed warmly. They shuffled up onto some of the rocks, and Yuuri immediately wound his tail around his mate's, now back to its usual silver, and the action made Viktor smile warmly.

“That feels good, Yuuri,” Viktor murmured, motioning to their intertwined tails, and Yuuri smiled.

“It does?” he asked, and Viktor nodded.

“It's a mating instinct, to make sure your partner doesn't escape,” Viktor explained, trailing his fingertips over Yuuri's dark scales, making him shiver. It felt so _good_ whenever Viktor touched his tail. “It's a dominant trait. If I were female, you'd be considered a _very good_ breeding partner.”

“I think you'd make a very pretty girl,” Yuuri blurted out, and immediately flushed a deep red. “I—I mean, you're a handsome man, like...so handsome, but if you were a girl, I think you'd be very pretty.”

Yuuri didn't think that his explanation helped very much, as Viktor continued to gaze at him bemusedly.

“Um...Merfolk lay eggs?” Yuuri asked, painfully aware that his statements and questions were all over the map, but he had no idea how to stop himself. He was excited at the idea of being _alone_ with Viktor for the night, but at the same time, he was also _petrified._

“Uh...yes?” Viktor replied, phrasing his answer like a question. “We lay eggs, but we stay close by and protect our pups. Many predators think our young make good food.”

“Are you a Monotreme?” Yuuri asked, and Viktor blinked in confusion.

“Is that some sort of human term?” Viktor asked, and Yuuri flushed once again in embarrassment.

“It's not bad,” Yuuri explained, leaning in for another kiss, which made Viktor tremble with delight. “It just means that you're a mammal who lays eggs, like a platypus or an echidna.”

“What's a mammal?”

“Oh, um...it's a term humans use to classify...animals?” Yuuri replied, hoping he didn't sound too pretentious as he said it. “Usually, it means an animal who breathes air, has hair, and suckles its young.”

“Oh.” Viktor paused, his tail twitching under Yuuri's, almost like he didn't know how to react to this information. “Is that important to humans? To classify things?”

“Um...sort of, I guess,” Yuuri replied, shrugging weakly. “Humans like to put things in their own little classification—it helps them make sense of the world. Not everyone agrees with it, though.”

“Is it important to _you_?”

“Not anymore,” Yuuri replied, laughing as he moved in to kiss Viktor again. “After everything I've seen and experienced with you and the other merfolk...you defy classification. It's _wonderful_.”

Viktor beamed at him, part joy, part relief. Yuuri could see the emotions in the other merman's eyes, and it seemed as though deep down Viktor bore some sort of unfounded worry he hadn't spoken on—like this life would never be enough for Yuuri when he'd left so much behind on land.

And had Viktor been like Yuri or Otabek, perhaps that may have been true. Yuuri needed his human family as much as he needed his merfolk one, and it was so wonderful that everyone (more or less) accepted him wholeheartedly.

_Now if only Yuuko could accept me, maybe everything would be perfect_ , _but I won't worry about that right now,_ Yuuri thought as he leant in to kiss Viktor again, content to forget everything for the night, and figure it out tomorrow.

 

Yuuri pressed a soft kiss to Viktor's lips. Viktor let out a soft little sigh, his hands moving to Yuuri's waist, and gently drew him closer.

“Yuuri...” Viktor whispered in between kisses, “would it be all right if we were... _more_ than affectionate tonight?”

The tentative suggestion caused a thrill of nervousness pool in Yuuri's belly, though not out of fear of going further, per se, but rather from the mechanics of it. _How_ were they supposed to do it?

“Erm...what did you have in mind?” Yuuri asked, finding himself markedly relieved when his voice didn't shake too badly as he posed the question.

“It's easier to do in open water,” Viktor explained softly while he trailed a hand down Yuuri's side, making him shiver. “We go into open water, and I touch you...here.”

One of Viktor's hands moved to Yuuri's front, several inches down from where his scales began, and to the first of two slits that cut through his scales.

Yuuri knew that that was where his cock was concealed—he'd relieved himself enough times since his turning to know where it was located. By all appearances, it seemed to function like most marine genitalia; it would not unsheath for such a mundane activity as peeing, while the second slit was his anus, which acted exactly how one would expect it to.

When Viktor touched the first slit however, his fingers dipping into it with purpose, Yuuri felt his mind go _white_.

“ _Oh..._ ” Yuuri let out a soft, mewling gasp paired with an odd, momentary pressure as his cock poked out of the slit ever so slightly.

When Yuuri looked down, bracing himself to see something mildly horrifying, given how ridiculous marine genitals tended to look, he was _deeply_ relieved when he saw what to him looked like a perfectly normal penis.

_Thank god, it looks normal_ , Yuuri thought, letting out a little laugh as he pulled Viktor close again, kissing him hard while he arched his tail somewhat awkwardly in order to grind himself against Viktor's slit, squishing Viktor's hand between them.

The action earned him a shuddering moan from the other merman, while just as quickly Viktor's cock began to slide out, looking more or less just like Yuuri's did.

“I like it when you touch me there,” Yuuri breathed, and Viktor chuckled warmly.

“It's easier in open water,” he repeated, his voice hoarse, as though he was struggling to speak through his arousal. “We can move more freely.”

“How will we be able to tell the other if we need to stop if we can't speak?” Yuuri asked hesitantly. “I still have a hard time with echolocation, if that is what you use to communicate...”

“Tap my arm, like this,” Viktor suggested, reaching out to tap Yuuri's bicep lightly, but firmly, with three rapid taps. “If I do that, or you do that, it means _stop_. Is that okay?”

“Yeah,” Yuuri replied, smiling a little. “I—yeah. I can do that.” He paused, and offered Viktor a lascivious grin. “But I don't plan on stopping.”

Viktor threw his head back, laughing, and Yuuri smiled, his chest seeming to warm at the mirthful sound coming from him. He hugged Yuuri closer, and pressed another kiss to his lips.

“Oh, I love you, Yuuri,” Viktor breathed, and Yuuri smiled, tears of joy coming to his eyes at the sincerity in Viktor's voice.

“I love you too, Viktor.”

Smiling broadly, together they slipped from the cave hand in hand. Viktor led him to something like an outcropping of rock, which gave them at least an illusion of privacy (in particular if anyone came looking for them) as well as a nice, open space for them to move more freely.

At three hundred feet down, the water was dark, almost black, but Yuuri could still see enough that he did not feel at all uneasy about where they were. With his gills doing the work of breathing for him, it felt almost like he was suspended in space, but part of the cosmos, instead of sealed off from it.

Viktor's arms slipped around Yuuri's waist and coaxed him closer. Yuuri's arousal spiked at the touch, and he gasped, a few bubbles slipping past his lips as he willingly eased forward until their lips sealed together in a warm kiss.

Yuuri's left arm hooked around Viktor's neck, while Yuuri's opposite hand rested against his cheek encouragingly. He tried to wrap his tail around Viktor's, but the action made them sink, and reluctantly he released his partner. Yuuri settled for more kissing, flicking his tail in order to grind their erections together, sending shockwaves of pleasure through himself at the gentle touch, and earning him a delightful shiver of pleasure from Viktor.

Viktor let out a little grunt, perhaps the limits of his vocalizations beneath the water, as though he had not expected Yuuri to take the lead so readily.

Yuuri broke the kiss almost unwillingly, and flicked his tail with slight, almost imprecise movements, awkwardly moving his way down Viktor's beautifully toned body until he came face-to-face with his cock.

As Yuuri had previously noted, it was distinctly human-like in design, and thankfully looked nothing like the marine reproductive organs he'd seen during his time at school. It appeared to be circumcised, though Yuuri suspected that it was natural—surely the lack of foreskin reduced the risk of bacterial growth, or something like that?

Yuuri shook his head, laughing at himself as he moved closer. Now was _not_ the time for scientific observation.

Viktor placed his hands gently on Yuuri's shoulders, quietly encouraging, but not forceful by any means. Yuuri glanced up to Viktor's face, smiling, but the dark water had mostly obscured him. Yuuri found that he didn't mind so much—he could _feel_ how Viktor felt, and that was enough.

Yuuri refocused his attention on the appendage in front of him. He licked his lips once before he leant in, closing his lips tentatively over the tip.

Yuuri felt Viktor shudder, and a thrill of pride rushed through him in knowing that _he_ had made Viktor react like that.

Yuuri took a little more of the organ into his mouth, his hands shifting to rest at Viktor's waist, while Yuuri continued to flick his tail lightly in order to maintain his balance. Viktor let out another little grunt, his hands trembling a little, as though he was struggling to keep still.

Encouraged by the clear effect he was having on Viktor, Yuuri abandoned his plan to go slow. and swallowed his cock to the root.

The action earned him more of those sweet little grunts, and Yuuri smiled inwardly.

Yuuri pulled back a little and Viktor's hands tensed on his shoulders, as though he wanted to protest, his tail flicking in a mixture of pleasure and agitation. The latter emotion seemed to drain away the moment Yuuri took Viktor back into his mouth, beginning a bobbing, thrusting motion, which made Viktor grunt again, his tail twisting in pleasure as Yuuri moved.

Yuuri shifted his grip, moving one hand to where Viktor's ass would have been had he been human, and he ran his hand along the scales while he continued to bob his head. Viktor let out a choked sound, like he wanted to cry out but was unable to under the water, and at the same moment Viktor released into Yuuri's mouth without warning—and much more quickly than Yuuri had anticipated.

Yuuri could not help but notice the distinct _fishiness_ of the taste of Viktor's semen, even as Viktor's cock retracted and Yuuri spat out mouthfuls of the stuff, creating faint white clouds in the water for little more than a moment before the current swept them away. At the moment, he was glad for their inability to talk in the water, as Yuuri was _certain_ he'd say something stupid regarding the taste.

Which, in hindsight, shouldn't've been _that_ shocking, but for some reason, _it was_.

Viktor was hardly willing to wait for Yuuri's thoughts to right themselves before he took his turn, flicking his tail in order to drop down a little until he and Yuuri were eye to eye, his ocean-blue gaze seeming to glow in the darkness as he drew Yuuri close, and kissed him.

Yuuri was all too happy to kiss him back—he _loved_ kissing Viktor. He was warm, and the feel of him never failed to make Yuuri's heart soar. He knew that he loved him, their initial kiss was proof enough of that, but now it felt more _real_. Viktor was here, he wasn't hiding from him, and he wholeheartedly accepted every part of Yuuri, even the human parts. Everything about Viktor's easy acceptance made Yuuri love him all the more.

Viktor's hand pressed to Yuuri's chest, rubbing the skin gently as they kissed, and Yuuri shivered involuntarily as Viktor slid the limb down between his pectoral muscles, across his abdomen, and towards his groin.

Yuuri inhaled sharply when Viktor took him in hand—his grip a warm vice, and he quickly stroked Yuuri back to full hardness.

Viktor's kisses became more insistent as he began to stroke Yuuri in earnest, seeming to know _just_ where to touch him in order to give Yuuri the most pleasure. He dipped his fingers under the foreskin, he pressed against the head and along the underside.

Yuuri's tail was twisting just as Viktor's had, almost thrashing as he clung to Viktor desperately, not quite certain if he would fall into the depths or rise to the surface like a cork if Viktor let go. Yuuri was moving his tail so violently that it was difficult to glean just _what_ would happen if Viktor wasn't holding him in place.

Yuuri abruptly broke the kiss, a whine bubbling up in his throat, but it escaped him more like a grunt. He arched himself into Viktor's touch, desperate for more, and just as abruptly buried his face in the crook of Viktor's neck, kissing the skin as he panted and squirmed, is gills seeming to _ache_ with the rapidity of his breaths, until, at last, he found his release.

The cloud of semen lasted for barely a moment before it dissipated, while Viktor hugged Yuuri close, his body limp against his silvery partner while he ducked farther into the crevice they'd been hiding in.

Yuuri wasn't quite certain why Viktor hadn't just immediately taken them back to their cave, when just as suddenly a bull shark jetted out from beneath them. Its teeth gnashed over the empty space that had previously contained them, showing Yuuri just how narrowly they had avoided disaster. Even so, Yuuri was still awestruck at the sight of the powerful and beautiful animal; he'd never been so close to a shark in his _life_. The shark, in turn, glanced at the two mermen for barely a moment before it darted off just as quickly as it had come.

Yuuri couldn't find it in himself to be frightened. Bull sharks were largely considered to be one of the more dangerous species, but it became clear to Yuuri almost at once that likely the creature had thought Yuuri's thrashing was that of a struggling animal, and not a healthy merman.

Why it darted off instead of attacking was another mystery. The look in the creature's eyes was more intelligent than Yuuri would have anticipated, and it regarded them in the oddest way—Almost like it _respected_ Yuuri and Viktor.

Which was just ridiculous...wasn't it?

Yuuri came to no conclusions as Viktor began to guide them back to their cave, his arm wrapped firmly around Yuuri, which was a relief, given that Yuuri felt as though his entire body was made of rubber. If Viktor let go, Yuuri was fairly certain he'd sink like a stone.

The remainder of their trip was thankfully free of large predators, and when they surfaced in the cave, Yuuri let out a long, load moan of contentment, which seemed to echo off the cave walls, and made Viktor laugh.

Oh, Viktor, that was _incredible!_ ” Yuuri said as he snuggled close, laying his tail across Viktor's affectionately before he leant in to kiss him. “And to see a bull shark like that, I've never seen one that close before, not even during a shark cage dive, and...just...wow.”

“Was seeing a shark better than our affection?” Viktor asked teasingly, and Yuuri laughed.

“The shark comes in a close second,” Yuuri replied, kissing him again. “You made me feel...so special.”

“Me too, Yuuri,” Viktor replied, his voice softening as he leant in for more sweet kisses. “You make me feel...complete.”

Yuuri blinked joyous tears from his eyes, smiling as he pillowed his cheek against Viktor's chest. He wanted to say more, but he felt like there was nothing _to_ say. Their evening had been so wonderful; unburdening, somehow, and Yuuri was loath to say anything that might ruin it.

Instead, he hugged Viktor close like an oversized teddy bear, and he closed his eyes.

“I love you,” Viktor whispered, his voice soft and sluggish with the first dregs of sleep.

“I love you too, Viktor,” Yuuri replied, and he smiled when he felt Viktor shiver with joy.

At peace, Yuuri fell asleep, leaving all his worries behind.

For the moment, at least.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I did a lot of extremely weird research for this, and while some writers may feel justified in suspending disbelief for this sort of scenario, I wanted to keep this as plausible as possible when it comes to sexual contact in between marine creatures, without it getting “too weird” for you guys. I hope this works :)


	16. Run

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Next update is scheduled for Tuesday, July 2nd. Updates are being moved to Mondays, but July 1st is a holiday here in Canada (Canada Day!), so my schedule for that week will be a little topsy-turvy.
> 
> My Beta was on vacation this week, and I had a friend go over this chapter. Any major mistakes are on her :P. Enjoy!

Chapter Sixteen – Run

When Yuuri woke the following morning, it was to a feast.

On the slab of rock next to him, Viktor had laid out a spread of abalone, scallops, oysters, mussels, clams, and even a few crabs, all ready to eat.

“Wow,” Yuuri said as he rubbed his eyes and sat up, “this looks amazing, Viktor. What's the occasion?”

“Pretty much you,” Viktor replied, smiling softly as he leant over to press a kiss to Yuuri lips, which made him laugh. “After the stress of seeing your friend yesterday, I thought you deserved to be doted on a little.”

“You  _ always  _ dote on me,” Yuuri teased, smiling in return, “and after last night...I can't say I was very stressed by the time we went to sleep.”

“I'd say  _ excited  _ would be more like it,” Viktor replied, his smile shifting to a smirk. “You wouldn't stop talking about sharks, and you being in cages.”

“It's a  _ shark cage _ , I told you,” Yuuri said as he laughed a little. “Humans would use them to study sharks close-up, without worry that we'd get eaten. I wasn't locked in there permanently or anything.”

Yuuri reached for a scallop as he talked, and popped it into his mouth. At once, he nearly moaned aloud at the fresh, sweet taste as it bathed his tongue, immediately cutting his explanation short.

His pleasure over the scallop must have shown on his face, given the way Viktor was smiling at him. Yuuri didn't have the good grace to blush as he reached for an oyster, and together, they tucked into their feast.

 

~*~

 

“Oh, here they are!” Mila trilled the moment Yuuri and Viktor broke the surface of their submarine cave, and Yuuri felt his face turn bright red as almost cheered like they were at a sporting event. “The lovebirds have returned!”

Yuri crossed his arms, making a sound of disgust, but Otabek was applauding with the others, while Viktor laughed loudly and warmly at all the attention.

“Oh, stop it!” Viktor cried, grinning wildly as he threw an arm over Yuuri's shoulders. “You're embarrassing us!”

“You don't  _ look _ very embarrassed,” Mila pointed out teasingly. “You look like you're  _ enjoying  _ this, Viktor.”

“Maybe I am,” Viktor said, still smiling as he and Yuuri made for one of the cave's many stone seats, and they pulled themselves up before Viktor once more coiled an arm around Yuuri. “But if you tease Yuuri too much, I  _ definitely _ won't enjoy it.”

Some of the cajoling immediately died down, though Yuuri noted that none of the merfolk looked particularly disappointed by this—in fact, they seemed to just accept it without any form of protest.

“So...?” Mila said, leaning a little closer to Yuuri once they'd gotten settled. “How was it?”

Yuuri hesitated, glancing around the cavern for a moment. Viktor, Georgi, and Otabek were talking softly, Yuri was listening in, his brow pinched in concentration. Sara was leaning against Mila, apparently just as curious about Yuuri's answer as her girlfriend was.

“It was...” Yuuri paused for another minute, and bit his lip, stifling his grin somewhat. “It was  _ really  _ good.”

“Yes we know that part,” Sara teased as she mirrored Mila's grin. “ _ Details!  _ Tell us what it was like!”

Yuuri laughed, and cast his eyes over to Viktor, who was deep in talk with the others. The cave was small and thus there was little space between them, but Viktor and the others seemed to be making a genuine effort to not be overheard.

“Oh, don't mind them,” Mila said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “They're just discussing the Sardine Run...again.”

“Sardine Run?” Yuuri asked. The name sounded familiar from his schooling, but he couldn't place it.

“Oh, yeah,” Sara chimed in with a smile. “Usually we'd be heading there by now, but...um...”

She trailed off, but her Poker Face was so horrible it didn't take a genius to work out how her explanation was supposed to end.

“But you guys haven't left yet because of me?” Yuuri filled in, and Sara winced.

“It's not really a big deal,” Mila added hastily. “The Sardine Run doesn't  _ always  _ happen, so it's a gamble to swim all the way to South Africa. A few times it's been a big waste of time because the sardines won't run at all. Whenever we have a newly changed merperson in our shiver, we won't go; it's not just a  _ you  _ thing. It's a long trip, and we don't want to risk the new merperson getting lost, especially in southern waters.”

Yuuri could understand that; as he tried to map out the migration in his head, he knew they'd likely head south, and then west, swimming past Australia then underneath Asia and Europe on their way to South Africa, and they'd come very close to Antarctic waters, which were some of the roughest waters in the world. For someone new at this, it would be suicide to undertake such a migration too soon.

And yet, despite this knowledge, Yuuri couldn't help but feel a little guilty.

Runs—Salmon, Sardine, whatever—by their very nature were a massive food source. Even though the merfolk typically lived on shellfish and cephalopods, they couldn't turn away from such a massive feast.

“I'm sorry,” Yuuri said before he could completely think it through, and immediately Mila shook her head as she offered Yuuri a warm smile.

“Don't be sorry, Yuuri,” Mila said, “you didn't  _ ask  _ that we skip the Run, and it wouldn't be fair to ask you to migrate so far when you haven't been a merman for very long. We might go next year, though.”

“Okay,” Yuuri agreed readily, though inside he felt his stomach churn with guilt. This was  _ his  _ fault.

_ If I want to fix this, I need to practice, _ Yuuri realized in almost the same breath, even as Sara and Mila went back to trying to worm details of his time with Viktor out of him.

He forced a smile and played along, while mentally he began to plan for the night ahead.

 

~*~

 

They spent the day pleasantly enough—in and out of the caves, frolicking in the deeper waters away from the prying eyes of humans, fishing and scrounging for shellfish, and in general enjoying themselves. The open air had a faint bite to it, and snow had begun to collect on the banks, but the water was warm enough, and provided they stayed below the waves, none of them felt the wintry chill.

As night began to encroach on them, turning the shallower water black, the shiver headed back to their cave, ate, chatted, and shared stories, then slowly began to fall asleep.

Yuuri lay off to one side with Viktor, with the older merman's arm coiled around his waist, and Yuuri's tail twisted around Viktor's. Yuri had complained that they looked like an octopus, which they both ignored with a warm laugh, and Yuri wrapped himself around Otabek, almost in challenge to Yuuri and Viktor's position.

“I heard you talking about the Sardine Run,” Yuuri murmured, softly enough that even if anyone was still awake, they weren't likely to hear him.

“Yeah,” Viktor replied, shifting a little closer until he could press a kiss to Yuuri's lips. “Georgi, Yuri, and Otabek still want to go, so we were talking about it. It's safer if we travel in larger groups, and so I don't think it's a good idea for them to go alone, but they weren't really listening to me.”

“I want to practice tonight,” Yuuri said softly, ignoring Viktor's look of shock as he ploughed forward. “I mean...my endurance, or something, then I can go, and we can all go together...right?”

“Yuuri...” Viktor began with a soft, almost frustrated sigh. “It's already snowing on land here, which means if the sardines  _ do  _ run this year, it's probably already started. It would take us too long to get there. I know you want to keep up with us, but you need more practice. Such a long migration isn't something you can just... _ do _ .”

“But I was a diver before!” Yuuri insisted, his voice a sharp, anguished hiss that made Viktor wince. “Viktor, I've been in the ocean my  _ whole life _ . Why won't you listen to me?”

“Otabek was a fisherman before he came to us,” Viktor said, “he couldn't migrate to the Run the first year with us either, and he was also on the water since he was a pup.”

“Child.”

“What?”

“Young humans...they're called children, or a child, not pups,” Yuuri filled in, smiling a little, and Viktor laughed.

“Oh. Well...a child, then,” Viktor amended. “Anyway, he was certain that he could do it, Yuri trusted him, but about halfway there he began to tire, and we ended up joining a pod of common dolphins, and they helped us take turns carrying him the rest of the way to the Run. Otabek eventually admitted to Yuri that it was a bad idea, and we stayed off the coast of South Africa for a few weeks so that he could recover enough to chance the trip home.”

“Home...being here?” Yuuri ventured, but by the look on Viktor's face, he could tell that that wasn't the answer.

“Off the coast of Russia,” Viktor replied. “We came down here with the intent of moving on to our breeding grounds near Australia, but I got a little... _ distracted. _ ”

Viktor gazed at Yuuri pointedly, and Yuuri felt his face flood with colour again.

“Oh.” Yuuri bowed his head a little, at a loss for whether or not he should feel guilty about that. However, Viktor merely smiled and shook his head before he leant in to peck Yuuri on the lips lightly.

“Don't try and apologize, Yuuri,” Viktor said, one hand reaching up to touch Yuuri's cheek before he moved to kiss him again. “I know you might feel guilty, but we're not struggling to find food here, the water is warm enough for us, and we are close to your family. We can stay here permanently if we chose.”

“And what about...breeding?” Yuuri ventured as he glanced around at the group. He didn't really see the point, given that all three of the couples in their shiver were queer, and so couldn't  _ exactly  _ breed with one another—except maybe Georgi, he wasn't sure with him.

“I've sired a few pups over the years,” Viktor replied, shrugging a little. “I'm not exactly equipped to feed one, so they tend to go with their mother's shiver instead of ours. Merfolk congregate at night so that we don't draw human attention, we find a partner, she lays an egg, I fertilize it, we protect it until the pup is born, then we go our separate ways. It's not...love. It's just...”

“Biological imperative?”

“ _ What  _ does that mean?” Viktor demanded, laughing a little too loudly, and earning a few disgruntled hisses from the others. Viktor hastily lowered the volume of his voice, though he was still giggling, even as Yuuri rolled his eyes.

“It means...sort of doing things or wanting things even if you're not really sure why you want them? Like...some girls I knew when I was younger, they really didn't want children—they  _ really  _ didn't want them. Then when we got older, suddenly they  _ really  _ wanted them. I mean, it's not a blanket thing, not every girl would feel like that, but some did. Is it sort of like that?”

“I guess so,” Viktor admitted, shrugging his shoulders a little. “I mean, some years it just felt like something I needed to do. Not all merfolk are born from eggs, some say that at least half of us were turned by True Love's Kiss, so it's not something we  _ need  _ to do every year, but...”

Viktor trailed off, and shrugged, smiling pleasantly as he gazed across at Yuuri as he asked, “is that okay?”

“It's not good or bad, I guess,” Yuuri admitted as he met Viktor's eyes. “I know that's pretty normal for marine animals—one partner usually just leaves a deposit and lets the other do all the work, with some exceptions, obviously, but for humans it's more...personal? If I was with you in the human world, and you just left to make a baby with someone else, it would be seen as a betrayal.”

“If you don't want me to, I won't, Yuuri,” Viktor said, reaching out to touch Yuuri's cheek gently, reverently. “We're not  _ in _ the human world, but that does not mean I get to use that excuse to hurt you. If you do not wish me to breed with someone else, I won't.”

“Then I won't either,” Yuuri replied, and he giggled when his response brought a wide smile out of Viktor.

“Good, you'll be sterile and pupless together,” Yuri called from across the cave. “Now shut the fuck up and  _ go to sleep. _ ”

Yuuri and Viktor both snorted. As they settled down, or rather, attempted to in between bouts of giggles, it only caused Yuri to groan in frustration when the rest of the shiver joined in on their laughter.

 

~*~

 

Despite Viktor's reassurances regarding the Run, Yuuri still felt like he was somehow letting everyone down by their supposition that he couldn't do it. If he could dive to a hundred feet on a lungful of air and stay down for ten minutes, why couldn't he travel a few thousand miles on his own steam? Did they think he was  _ weak? _

Yuuri didn't like how it made him feel, and so when he was certain that everyone was finally asleep, he uncurled himself from around Viktor, wiggled out of his embrace, and slipped back into the water.

This time, he ensured that Viktor was still asleep before he slipped away, not wanting an audience, in particular when he had no idea how he was supposed to train himself for something like this.

When Yuuri surfaced, this time, he was not accompanied by any large whales or other predators, and Viktor did not follow him. The sea was black and the surface devoid of human life, illuminated only by the fingernail of moonlight in the clear sky, the distant lights off buoys or fishing boats, and the flickering light of a driftwood fire on the beach.

Yuuri paused.

_ Driftwood fire? _

Yuuri blinked, not quite certain how he could have missed it the first time he'd looked around. Yuuri fixed his gaze on the shore, and spotted a solitary figure in the little cove that he and his family had used for their picnic. They were bundled up in some sort of puffy jacket against the winter chill, and they were being warmed by a tall, crackling driftwood fire.

Yuuri knew he could have dismissed the sight of it as nothing more than a random person, or even some sort of vagrant warming themselves on the beach before they moved on. And yet, something compelled Yuuri to investigate and see who the person was. It seemed almost too convenient that this person just  _ happened  _ to be residing in the same space his family had had their picnic in barely a full day prior.

Yuuri dipped under the water as silently as he could, and flicked his tail just enough to jet himself forward without causing too many curious ripples in the water. He moved with the waves, picking up his pace only when it appeared as though the current wanted to drag him back out. Especially if he was wrong and this person turned out to be someone he  _ didn't  _ know, he did not wish to be noticed.

Yuuri stopped just shy of the fire's reach, and he felt his heart unclench as he gazed through the rippling water and to the figure who was staring almost meditatively into the flames.

Without pausing to think it through, Yuuri allowed his joy to direct him as he surfaced, and smiled at the figure.

“Hello, Yuuko.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: The Sardine Run is a real thing that takes place every winter off the coast of South Africa, conditions permitting. It is utterly pointless, given that the sardines are only following certain currents, and so “running” gets them nothing, except eaten by practically every predator for miles around.


	17. Complete

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: LAST CHAPTER! This came upon me and it wrapped up sooner than I had anticipated, but I am content with how this ended. I hope you guys enjoyed it too, this was my first foray into Viktuuri as the main pairing, and doing it as a Merman AU made the experience even better. Thank you guys so much for your support throughout the posting of this story, and I hope you guys like this final part!

Chapter Seventeen – Complete

Yuuko jumped at the sight of him, and Yuuri quickly lifted his hands in a motion of surrender.

“Yuuko, please,” Yuuri said, his voice soft and pleading as he shifted as far forward as he dared. Despite this, his friend continued to gaze at him with a look of fear that made Yuuri's heart ache. “Please, don't run from me. It's  _ me _ .”

Yuuko gazed at him, her eyes wide, and her lips parted slightly in a look of shock, and she appeared as though she wasn't sure whether she wanted to stay or go.

“Yu-chan,  _ please _ ,” Yuuri said, his eyes beginning to shine with desperate tears. “Please, just talk to me. I'm not a demon, or a monster. I'm just... _ me _ . I'm the same Yuuri who you fished for clams with when you were seven, and I'm the same Yuuri who snuck out sake from the onsen when my parents weren't looking when we were fourteen, and I'm the same Yuuri who dove with you every single day since we were fifteen.  _ Please _ , I haven't changed.”

“I'm—I'm sorry,” Yuuko said, her voice soft and her eyes downcast as she spoke. “It's just...hard. Seeing you like this, I mean. I've grown up hearing of Yōkai, and when I see you like this...”

Yuuko trailed off as she looked back up, and her eyes were shiny with tears.

“How can I help, Yuuko?” Yuuri asked, shifting in the water, just enough so that his tail was less visible, and Yuuko seemed to relax a little. “How can I make you feel better about this? You never rejected me as ama, even though I am a man. How can I help you know that it's  _ really  _ me?”

“I...I don't know,” she admitted, her voice soft and distinctly vulnerable, and Yuuri longed to reach out and hug her. She sniffled, and Yuuri felt his heart clench when he spotted tears dripping down her cheeks. “I—I know it's you now, Yuuri-kun, I  _ know  _ it is, b-but I'm still scared, and I don't even know  _ what  _ I'm scared of anymore. I h-hate it! I w-want to be able to go back to how we were, before any of this ha-happened!”

“Do you wish I never met Viktor?” Yuuri asked, and Yuuko let out a howling sob.

“N-No!” she cried, mopping her cheeks with her hands as she continued to weep. “I want you to be ha-happy! B-But...”

She trailed off again, and moved to wipe her cheeks with her sleeve, hiccoughing as she tried to calm herself down, though it didn't seem to help very much.

“I don't know what's wrong with me, Yuuri-kun,” Yuuko whispered, “I know it's still you, I  _ know  _ that. But...I'm still scared.”

“What are you scared of?” Yuuri asked. When Yuuko looked up at him, he offered her a warm smile. “Am I really so scary to you? You used to say in high school that I was too cute to scare anyone. Remember when the third-years were putting on that Haunted House, and they were looking for volunteer actors, and I tried to sign up, and everyone laughed at me, even you?”

“You're still too cute to scare anyone,” Yuuko replied, seemingly on reflex, rather than intentionally, and it caused her to blush.

Yuuri smiled, inching closer to Yuuko, perhaps closer than was wise, and the bitter winter wind stung his skin and scales.

“See?” Yuuri said, softly. “It's still me.”

“I  _ know  _ that!” Yuuko snapped, and a moment later, she winced. “Sorry. I didn't mean it like that. I just... _ you know, _ I grew up with all those fisherman's tales, and I even  _ married  _ a fisherman. I've always heard that if I talk to a sea dem—um, a sea  _ creature _ , and upset it, it will cause a typhoon. Takeshi won't even keep fish to sell if their faces look too human, he throws them right back, then prays for forgiveness. I just...after all that, it's hard to let go of those beliefs and really  _ know  _ that you're not a threat to me, or anyone else.”

Yuuri sat back, the waves splashing over his scales, and soothing the ache from being too far out of the water. He had known all this, of course, but something about truly  _ hearing  _ it from Yuuko somehow made it more real. He could hear the agonizing lilt in her voice, the  _ plea  _ for him to understand that she didn't want to be afraid him, but by the same token couldn't quite let go of her fear.

Yuuri wasn't entirely certain what to do, even knowing all of that. How was he supposed to convince Yuuko that he wasn't a threat? Part of him almost wanted to explain his powers to her, tell her how he could use echolocation, and change his colouring when he dove deeper, and how Viktor could control the weather, but something told Yuuri that this would only increase her fear, not reduce it.

“I...I've learnt a lot since this happened,” Yuuri said, his voice soft and uncertain. He opened his mouth to continue, but Yuuko cut him off.

“I know, I know,” she said, rolling her eyes and sounding very much like her old self in that moment. “True Love's Kiss. One kiss, and you are transformed. Staying away from your True Love wasn't an option, it would only cause you more pain—emotional pain, I mean—and everything. Yuuri-kun, I  _ know _ .”

“I...what?” Yuuri sputtered, staring at her with wide eyes. “How do you know about that?”

“Your mom told me,” Yuuko replied, shrugging a little. “Is something wrong with that?”

“No, but...” Yuuri trailed off, and bit his lip. He did tell his mother about the kiss and everything, but never in so much detail. How had she known how agonizing it was to be away from Viktor after they'd met?

“I...I guess I told her more about it than I remember,” Yuuri admitted with a weak laugh, and Yuuko smiled.

“Your mom really wanted me to talk to you,” Yuuko admitted, her eyes downcast once again as she spoke, “that's why I came to the picnic-thing. It wasn't some grand plan to hurt you, but I just...I wanted to be sure...you know?”

“And that's why you ran at me with a Shinto exorcism in hand?” Yuuri asked, his lips twitching into a faint smirk, and Yuuko blushed with embarrassment.

“I needed to be sure!” she insisted, her tone so fervent that had their relationship not been in shambles, it would have been almost funny. “I'm sorry if I embarrassed you in front of your...mer-husband? Boy-mer-friend?”

“Okay,  _ now  _ you're making fun of me,” Yuuri said accusingly, his grin becoming more pronounced as he spoke, and to his surprise, Yuuko actually  _ laughed _ .

“Only a little bit,” she admitted between giggles, a hand lifted up to cover her mouth, and Yuuri smiled, unable to help but feel as though things were beginning to inch towards some semblance of normalcy. Yuuko was actually smiling and laughing with him; whatever barrier had kept her from him had finally broken, and Yuuri could not help but feel as though he at last had his best friend back. 

 

~*~

 

Yuuri and Yuuko talked late into the night. Yuuko had to get up a few times to scrounge for more firewood, while Yuuri dove and dug out some oysters for them to eat. Afterwards, Yuuko insisted she was in the mood for something sweet, and pulled out the ingredients for s'mores from her backpack, something she'd become rather obsessed with after spending a year studying Oceanography at UBC in Canada.

Yuuko speared the marshmallows, and handed a stick to Yuuri, who toasted his awkwardly over the flames, having to stretch out his arms fairly far to even reach the fire. Yuuko noticed straightaway, but beyond moving the entire pacific ocean a little to the left, there wasn't much she could do to remedy the situation.

“So, um...” Yuuko began, trailing off for the umpteenth time, though her voice was less timid, and she sounded much more like her old self. “I never got the whole story, not really, and I was wondering...”

“Yeah?”

“Well...how did you and Viktor meet?”

“You know how we met, Yu-chan,” Yuuri replied, and Yuuko giggled.

“I know, but let's do this right,” Yuuko said warmly. “Tell me how you met.”

Yuuri laughed, his heart swelling with warmth, and he repeated the story. He told Yuuko of seeing Viktor in the sunken ship, and he told her of how she had thought that he was  _ just seeing things _ , which made Yuuko laugh and look away in embarrassment. He told her of telling his mother, and how she insisted on taking him back to apologize to the merman, and how that had led to the tearing of his larynx, and a very insightful albeit one-sided conversation.

Yuuri told her every detail he could recall, even the events that happened after his turning, and how he and Viktor had eventually reconciled, although he left out the more intimate details, certain that Yuuko wouldn't want to hear about  _ that _ .

“Wow,” she said, her voice soft, airy, and wistful.

“Yeah,” Yuuri agreed with a shy smile.

“ _ Wow _ ,” she repeated, an edge of excitement to her voice. “Oh, Yuuri-kun, it sounds like some sort of...of...fairy tale.” She paused, and her joy softened to a sombre sort of  expression as she regarded her friend. “I'm really sorry...for everything. Yuuri-kun, I should have been there with you, and I...I...I'm a bad friend. I abandoned you. I should have been there to gossip with you about Viktor when he was being stupid, and instead—”

“—Yu-chan, it wasn't your fault, I—”

“—yes it was my fault!” Yuuko insisted, and Yuuri felt his heart clench when he heard her voice break, and she began to cry again. “I was a  _ bad  _ friend! I needed to be there for you and—and I wasn't!”

“Yu-chan—” Yuuri began, but he was immediately cut off by her as she interrupted him again.

“I'm so s-sorry Yuuri! I'm sorry!”

“ _ Yuuko! _ ” Yuuri shouted, and he clapped his tail against the surface of the water, making her let out a little squeak of surprise, and immediately she stopped crying.

“Yu-chan, I'm not mad at you—I never was mad at you,” Yuuri said, his voice softened and consoling, but despite this, it was clear in her expression that she didn't believe him. “ _ Really _ . I was never mad. I was sad. I remembered how you were raised, but I really thought that you'd be able to look past all that because we're friends—”

“—and I should have—” Yuuko began, but went quiet when Yuuri shot her a look.

“I knew you'd have to come around in your own time, but it was hard to wait for you. Yu-chan, you're my  _ best  _ friend, and you still are. I don't hate you because of everything you did. I knew you were scared, and that's okay. When this first happened, I was  _ really  _ scared too.”

“Really?” Yuuko asked, her voice softer, almost diminished. “You weren't excited?”

“Excitement came later,” Yuuri replied with a weak smile. “At first, I was scared. I was also sad, because I wouldn't be able to see my family again.”

Yuuri gave her a look, one to imply that he also included her in that statement, and she responded with a soft, watery smile.

Yuuri opened his mouth to say more, when he heard a soft, but distinctive splashing a little farther out to sea. Yuuko did not seem to notice it, evidenced by the way she jumped a little when Viktor swam up, smiling pleasantly, a hand sliding across Yuuri's waist as he regarded the human.

“I woke up and you weren't there,” Viktor said, his voice soft, as though he did not intend the words for Yuuko. “I thought you might be in the shallows trying to practice for the Run.”

“That was the plan,” Yuuri admitted with a weak laugh, “but then I saw Yuuko.”

“Run?” she asked curiously, causing both mermen to turn back to her.

“Sardine Run,” Yuuri replied. “Viktor told me that they do a migration for it every year, but they cancelled it because of, well...me.”

“That makes sense,” Yuuko said with a small nod, “I guess you're still getting used to everything, and it'd be a lot to travel that far when you've only been a merman for a short time.”

“ _ See _ ?” Viktor said with a laugh and a triumphant air to his voice, “I told you!”

“I can't  _ believe _ you two are ganging up on me about this!” Yuuri complained, which only caused Yuuko and Viktor to start laughing, and Yuuri blushed pink.

 

Viktor stayed with them as they continued to chat and joke, the hours passing by like minutes. Yuuko ran up to her car more than once to get more supplies—that is, more graham crackers or marshmallows. They enthusiastically introduced Viktor to the true magic of s'mores, though he told them that he liked cake better. However, Yuuri suspected that this was because Viktor was not quite as adept as them at the art of roasting marshmallows, and his came out rather blackened, instead of golden-brown.

When the fire began to die down again, Yuuri and Viktor offered to help Yuuko collect more firewood, but she only laughed and complained that they'd get it all wet. Instead, they swam up and down along the bank with her while she selected pieces of driftwood to build the fire back up with, swimming out to deeper water and leaping out of the water for her, doing tricks not unlike those a dolphin might try, which made her laugh, instead of making her more fearful.

 

The sun rose without any of the trio really noticing. However, they  _ did _ notice when a fourth voice joined their little party.

“I  _ thought  _ I might find you out here!”

Yuuri tensed, his eyes flitting up to the edge of the road, but he relaxed when he saw his mother traipsing down towards the beach with four large bento boxes held aloft in her arms.

“Okaasan!” Yuuri cried, “where did you come from?”

“From the car, silly,” she replied cheerily while she began to hand the boxes out, and when Yuuri opened his, he found a traditional Japanese breakfast, complete with rolls of omelette, onigiri, miso soup, nattō, and grilled fish, along with a thermos of green tea, which she used to pour out cups for everyone.

“I mean, how did you know we were here?” Yuuri explained while Viktor examined the contents of his own bento box curiously, which was the same as Yuuri's, except without the nattō.

“Just a feeling,” she replied, her explanation far too vague for Yuuri's liking, but Yuuko cut in before Yuuri could press her for more information.

“Yuuri-kun, stop pestering your mom. Let's eat!”

“ _ Itadakimasu! _ ”

Yuuri, Yuuko, and Hiroko said the word without thinking, their hands clapped together. Viktor tried to follow along, though Yuuri clearly heard him say,  _ Itamamamama,  _ and he did his best not to laugh at that.

They ate and chatted, with Yuuri interjecting questions on just  _ how  _ his mother had known that they'd be there. Often, Viktor or Yuuko would protest that it didn't matter, and they forced the subject away, while other times Hiroko would titter, but not give Yuuri any sort of proper answer.

 

By midmorning, Yuuko announced that she needed to get going.

“Oh, do you have to?” Yuuri asked mournfully, and Yuuko smiled at him.

“Yeah,” she replied, smiling weakly. “I need to go home and watch the girls while Takeshi goes out fishing. I'm already a little late.”

“Oh, okay,” Yuuri replied, finding that the response came to him more readily than he'd expected. Somehow, knowing that Yuuko had to leave but didn't want to made him feel a lot better. “Um...will you be coming back?”

“Yeah,” Yuuko replied, smiling warmly at him. “We have a lot of time to make up for, Yuuri-kun. I'm not abandoning you again, I promise.”

Without warning, Yuuko suddenly rushed into the surf, boots and all, and hugged Yuuri tightly.

Yuuri hugged her back, blinking tears out of his eyes as he clung to his best friend, while Viktor and Hiroko sat back and said nothing, allowing the two friends to have their moment.

When Yuuko at last let him go, Yuuri found that her eyes were as teary as his own, and as she reluctantly stamped out the remnants of her driftwood fire and headed up to her car, she kept glancing back, a little smile on her face, as though she was silently promising that she wouldn't abandon him again, and would indeed return, but this time with no fear in her heart.

 

A hand found his under the water, and drew Yuuri's attention slowly away from his friend.

Yuuri turned, and smiled when he saw Viktor, merman gazing at him with a look of warm adoration upon his face. He leant in and pressed a soft, sweet kiss to Yuuri's lips before he whispered, “I'll see you at the cave.”

“Okay,” Yuuri replied in the same soft tone, the kiss having left him in such a daze that he wasn't wholly aware of what he was agreeing to. Viktor pulled back from him and disappeared into deeper waters without another word, and Yuuri watched him go, a smile touching his lips, reassured that he would indeed see Viktor later, and not come to find him missing from his life again.

 

Quite suddenly, Yuuri found himself alone with his mother, who was watching him with a warm smile. Belatedly, Yuuri wondered if Viktor had somehow known that he wanted to talk to his mother privately before she left for home, or if, like his mother randomly showing up with breakfast, Viktor's knowledge of this was somehow just another coincidence.

“Okaasan?” Yuuri asked, his voice coming out almost panicked when it looked like she might be getting ready to leave, and her gaze lifted, the same pleasant smile on her face as before.

“Yes, Yuuki-kun?” she replied, cocking her head to the side a little. “Is something bothering you?”

“Yes—no...well...” Yuuri trailed off, and laughed weakly. “I don't know.”

“You don't know if something's bothering you?” she asked, arching a brow at him, but her tone of voice remained pleasant, rather than accusatory.

“Well...it's just...” Yuuri clenched his teeth for a moment, frustrated with himself. Why was he having such a hard time getting his thoughts in order?

When Yuuri glanced back to his mother, her expression had not changed. She still appeared curious, but not outwardly irritated with his inability to ask what he wanted to ask.

“I don't really know how to say it,” Yuuri said at last, “but when Yuuko told me what you said to her about my...erm... _ transformation _ , and you coming here today and...and... _ stuff _ ...well...you always seem to know more about it than almost anyone else about merfolk lore. Why is that?”

“Oh, Yuuri, I was wondering when you would ask me that,” Hiroko replied, her eyes twinkling with mirth, though she did not laugh outwardly. Yuuri blinked in confusion at her statement, but she pressed forward before he had the opportunity to ask what she meant. “Have you never wondered why I studied Marine Biology in school, or became ama, or any of the rest?”

“I just thought you really liked the sea,” Yuuri replied, finding himself markedly confused by the question. “You always said that you became ama because Obaachan did it before you.”

“Well, that last part isn't quite true,” Hiroko replied, smiling a little. She paused for a moment, as though she was hesitating, then said, “you see...True Love's Kiss can have two outcomes. When I met your father, my life changed rather dramatically, you see.”

Yuuri's mouth dropped open.

Was his mother saying what he  _ thought  _ she was saying?

“Okaasan?” Yuuri asked weakly, while his mother's eyes continued to twinkle in amusement. In that moment, Yuuri  _ knew  _ that his mother was telling him the truth.

Katsuki Hiroko was a  _ mermaid _ .

“It's funny, that story of my time in Crete...” his mother said thoughtfully, her eyes fixed on the horizon as she spoke. “Funny...you see, because the mermaid in the story, the one with the shell-flute...well, that was me. The human onlooker was your father.

“My companions were all frightened of him, but I wasn't. I came back every day to see him, playing my shell-flute for him.” She paused her story, and let out a girlish giggle. “Then one day when I was playing for him, he walked straight into the ocean with all his clothes on. He nearly drowned, and I was so scared for him, so I kissed him. I remember being suddenly in pain, and when I woke up, I had legs.

“Your father did all he could for me, and he knew that I loved him, but I still missed the sea. He told me about the ama, and I began to train with them. Within a few years I could dive as deep as many of the older divers. It was like I had that missing piece back. My life was complete again.”

Hiroko smiled, a lilt of amusement in the expression as she gazed at her son, while Yuuri felt very little beyond blind shock. Save for an inkling that he  _ should  _ have known. He'd always felt a connection to the sea, one which seemed to go beyond what his fellow ama or even his school friends in University could attest to. It had always felt like he'd been part of the sea, and now he understood why.

“How come you never told me?” Yuuri asked, and Hiroko chuckled.

“Before all of this happened, would you have even believed me?”

“Maybe I would have,” Yuuri began, but laughed when his mother responded with a  _ look _ . “All right, I wouldn't've, but...it helps, knowing that I can talk to you about stuff, if I can't talk to Viktor, or the others.”

“You can always talk to me, Yuuri-kun. You can talk to me about anything, not just  _ stuff, _ ” Hiroko replied with a warm smile. “You are my son, and no matter if you have fins or feet, I will  _ always _ love you.”

Yuuri felt his throat grow tight, and with his bottom lip quivering, he threw himself at his mother in an awkward hug, unintentionally dragging her down with him into the shallows, and even as he soaked her jeans and coat with seawater, his mother laughed and cried with him as she hugged him back.

Yuuri understood it all now.

Yuuri understood how his mother had felt, how her life had become complete when she once more discovered that link to the ocean through her life as ama. She could never leave the sea, much in the same way that Yuuri felt as though he never could. It was  _ part  _ of him, much more now.

Yuuri could not say that he longed for land, like his mother longed for the sea following her own turning. Yuuri could confidently say that he did not miss his feet, or walking through a mall, or even his own bedroom.

What he had missed most was his family.

And yet, despite that, Yuuri had never lost them. Thanks to Viktor, he had ensured that Yuuri could still see them whenever he wanted, and even had gone as far to convince the shiver to live as close as possible to them.

Yuuri had lost nothing. He still had his family, his friends, and his love.

He was complete. The knowledge settled over Yuuri's heart like a soothing balm upon a burn, and he smiled.

A soft splashing alerted Yuuri to the fact that Viktor had surfaced again, and Yuuri turned, spotting Viktor a little farther out, floating near a buoy and waiting for him. Viktor waved merrily, and both Yuuri and Hiroko laughed as they waved back.

This was the life that Yuuri had always wanted.

Of that, he was certain. 


End file.
